• 







"""»■'■'"'»"«""'"»"' 



m 



m 



'■<'■:■ 



MA 



- HnmHSBS 

• I 

•■■''.•■•■■'"■■'.■■ 
l|i§P 







SHffifiBfflH 



,.,s 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ifcttp. t Tfyt.. 

ShellU 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ttll t 111? 



X 



^ PASTOR'S 



THOUGHT ON HYING THEMES. 



BY 



KEV. LYMAN EDWIN DAVIS, M.A. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

MAKSHAL H. BRIGHT, 

EDITOR OF THE "CHRISTIAN AT WORK." 



/ 



;.» 




NEW YORK: 
THE TIBBALS BOOK COMPANY. 
PITTSBURGH: BALTIMORE: 

wm. Mccracken, jr. wm. j. c. dulany & co. 



nv 



. 3b§ 



Copyright, 1887. 



All Eights Reserved. 



ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
THE ORPHANS' PRESS— CHURCH CHARITY FOUNDATION, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



DEDICATED 
TO THE MEMORY OE MY FATHER, 

fetu Soljn Wz&kvi Dams, 
tvho consecrated a vigorous mind, a loyal heart, 
a zealous temperament, a symmetrical char- 
acter, a princely manhood, an obedient 
faith, to the ministry of the gos- 
pel of the kingdom of god. 

The Author. 



AS YOU OPEN THE BOOK 



JUST why a layman should be invited to write an Intro- 
ductory Note to this volume, containing the fruits of a 
pastor's fresh and incisive thought on living themes, I do 
not know, unless it be that, as the book is sure to be read 
— as are all works outside of exegetical Commentaries and 
technical treatises on theology— by ninety-nine laymen to 
one clergyman, the author may have concluded that a lay- 
man's introduction would go further than a word of approval 
from some brother of " the cloth." Be that as it may, how- 
ever, after a careful reading of the work in proof sheets, I 
may say one thing very confidently : the volume, like the 
pudding of the proverb, will be found to best supply the 
witness to its excellence. 

Mr. Davis is known no less outside than inside his de- 
nominational lines as an original thinker, a clear, forceful 
writer, and one who has never been graduated from the 
school of dullness. And I greatly mistake if this volume 
be not found not only to fully justify Mr. Davis's reputa- 
tion, but to materially enhance that reputation with his 
readers. The scope of the work is, unlike many books of 
to-day, clearly set forth in the title ; and it may be added 
that the "themes" are no less "living" than the thought 
is distinct, perspicuous and entertaining ; indeed, there is 

(v) 



Vi INTRODUCTION. 

not a topic touched upon in this book but which sustains 
close relation to the issues of the present, — a present of 
incisive thought and many-sided problems. And just be- 
cause of this, the reader may not think to find himself in 
entire accord with every position taken in the volume. 
Indeed, not a few of his readers, I imagine — the writer of 
this among them — will not be able to take up with the 
conclusions reached in his chapter on " Religion in the 
Public Schools"; ably advocated as his views are, and 
having the concurrence of some of our clearest thinkers. 
This occasion for dissent, so far from detracting from the 
interest of the book, adds to that interest and enhances the 
value of the work : certainly it is refreshing to meet with a 
writer who challenges, so ably and so interestingly, and 
yet in such good spirit, your own convictions, and puts 
them to the test. 

But there is no occasion for a tedious preface here; the 
book deserves better treatment. This only remains to be 
said: Mr. Davis's "Thought" will be found stimulating, 
healthful and deeply interesting, as the reader will be sure 
to discover before he has gone far, on the principle de- 
clared by Charles Lamb, that a mouthful of mutton attests 
the quality of the whole joint. 

Marshal H. Bright. 

Editorial Rooms " Christian at Work." 
New York, June 7, 1887. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Knots and What-nots in American Society. . 9 

Seek not Thine Own 39 

The Spirit of the Times 40 

Christ the King 62 

Development and Revelation. 63 

Whittier 89 

Paul the Single-hearted 90 

Song op the Pilgrim Ill 

The Tribute of the Flowers 112 

The Fallen Hero 122 

Idols of the Nineteenth Century ..... 123 

Song of the New Year 145 

Paul's Message to the Athenians ..... 146 

Child's Morning Prayer 158 

Life-words to a Dying World 159 

Easter Song 179 

Religion at the Door of the Public Schools . 180 

Japan Our Macedonia 206 

Henry Ward Beecher 207 

The Light of Life 220 

The Sacrificial Love of God 221 

The Maid of Capernaum 241 

Spiritual Optics in the Art of Creed-making. 242 

As to the New Theology 251 

Shakespeare 262 

The Distribution of Labor 264 

A Branch of the Vine 279 

(vii) 



Knots and What-nots 

IN AMERICAN SOCIETY. 

[A Lecture delivered before the Adrian College Assembly.'] 



WHEN the Emperor Constantine came to 
build, upon the ruins of Byzantium, 
that great city which was to express at once his 
political power and his religious enthusiasm, he 
brought into contribution the spoils of Pagan 
genius, as well as the 'services of Christian in- 
dustry. The most magnificent cities, once the 
busy theatres of the multitudes, and represent- 
ing the loftiest civilization possible to Pagan- 
ism, overthrown and depopulated, became quar- 
ries, Irom which Christian architects drew the 
constructive materials of a new city, the theatre 
of a new humanity. And when, at length, Jus- 
tinian builded the Christian temple of Saint 
Sophia, the crowning splendor of Constantino- 
ple, he appropriately drew upon the crowning 
splendors of Paganism, insomuch that to this 
sanctuary of the new Faith, Diana was made to 
contribute the fragments of her renowned tem- 
ple at Ephesus ; and even the temple of the Sun 

(9) 



10 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

was despoiled for the greater glory of this tem- 
ple of the Lord. 

And this building of the old into the new, this 
process of waste and repair in material things, 
becomes a symbol of the evolutions that occur, 
and of the progress that is made, in human soci- 
ety. The spirit of Civilization rises, ever and 
ever, upon the fallen framework of Civilization. 
Out of the Past, a broken sacrifice, come the 
building-stones of the Present. Like as the 
visible monuments of fallen cities are absorbed 
in modern architecture, even so the civilizations 
of the past suffuse and strengthen the civiliza- 
tions of the present. 

No man, no people, can ever have lived utter- 
ly in vain. The world's To-day is the harvest of 
all the yesterdays. Our inheritance is the sum 
of the undying good realized by all the men 
and nations that are gone. Our institutions are 
the outcome of all the revolutions, all the cruci- 
bles, of history. Our opportunity is born of 
martyrdom. And if we stand, now, upon the 
world's Mount of Transfiguration, it is only 
because the great souls of the past have de- 
scended, weeping, into some garden of Geth- 
semane, that the world might be lifted up on 
their bruised hearts toward God. 

But the loftiness of the pinnacle to which 
modern civilization has attained should make 
its votaries and apostles all the more sensible of 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 11 

the dangers which threaten it. For, if the city 
of Constantine and the temple of Justinian are, 
in their earlier career, emblems of social and re- 
ligious advancement, the later history of those 
products of power, wealth, zeal and intelligence, 
could only typify a relapse of Christian civili- 
zation into chaos and barbarism. Even while 
St. Sophia stood in all its splendor, the spirit of 
paganism suffused the minds of the very people 
who bowed at Christian altars, while on the bor- 
ders of the palsied empire of Rome, paganism 
was championed by the militant hosts of the 
Northland and of the Desert, and, finding a hero 
at last, in the person of Mohammed, came forth 
with all the zeal of ignorance and all the might 
of perseverance, overthrowing at once the altars 
of Constantine and his empire. Then, in the 
streets and market-places of the City of the 
Golden Horn, the name of Mohammed was 
heard above the name of Jesus, and, surmount- 
ing the dome of Saint Sophia, gleamed the Cres- 
cent instead of the Cross. Within and around 
the temple of Christian civilization there lurks 
a refined paganism, which, could it find the 
opportunity and the leadership, would conduct 
the world in sad countermarch, backward past 
all the trophies which mark advancement, even 
into the very beginnings of history. 

But if modern society in general, with its sys- 
tems and institutions, is the product of all that 



12 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

lias gone before, this advantage belongs, with 
peculiar emphasis, to American Society. The 
American system was inaugurated toward the 
fulness of the Time. At the close of the battle 
of Valmy, establishing the regime and the 
principles of the French Revolution, Goethe ex- 
claimed : "From this place and from this day 
forth commences a new era in our history." It 
is the peculiar fortune of America that her very 
history, as an organized system, began with 
that new era, while escaping, withal, much of 
the "tumult and travail through which new 
epochs are brought into being. We Americans 
may be pardoned, therefore, if not justified, in 
our rejoicing that we have inherited the estates 
of Society, released, by the war of the Revolu- 
tion, from the mortgage left upon Society by 
the systems of the past ; that we have entered 
our Promised Land without having had to wan- 
der in the Wilderness ; that our Jordan, politi- 
cally and socially speaking, had been crossed 
by England, our sturdy mother, while we as a 
nation were born amid the cries that went up 
with the falling of the walls of Jericho ; that, if 
we have never eaten the political manna, we 
have never suffered the political famine, the old 
corn of the land having been ours from the be- 
ginning ; that, the war of the American Revolu- 
tion having been the threshing day wherein the 
chaff of absolutism was swept away, and the 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 13 

war of the Rebellion having been the winnow- 
ing process by which the darnel of slavery was 
removed, onr system is now the unadulterated 
harvest of Civilization, approved of God as 
glorified of men. Ah well, we shall have to go 
to mill a many a day, yet, over by the river of 
Righteousness, and the crucible of the breath of 
God must be upon us still. Regenerations 
must come, making to themselves new environ- 
ments. But the matter of inevitable progress 
accepted and aside, the fact remains, making 
happy record for America, that the American 
system is the organized result of the survival of 
the fittest, socially and political^. America 
has escaped that frictional interflow of peoples 
which, for a long and sanguinary time, made it 
doubtful whether France should be Gaelic or 
Hungarian, Saxon or Norman ; whether Britain 
should be Celtic or Germanic, Danish or Angli- 
can ; whether Russia should be Sclavonic or 
Scandinavian. America has escaped the conflict 
between paganism and Christianity, the conflict 
between Yaticanism and religious liberty, the 
conflict between absolutism and democracy, 
the conflict between national piracy and inter- 
national law. And, even though some of these 
pagan forces still linger to dispute the field, 
fighting in broken columns, the political insula- 
tion of America removes her so largely from the 
conflict that a territorial advantage joins with 



14 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

time and temperament to exalt her above the 
militant type of Society, and to produce a 
simple, wonderful industrialism. 

But there are knots in American Society, and 
what-nots. The first knot is this : How to 
bring about, in its maximum of utility and of 
right, the co-operation of Labor and Capital. 
Capital is that portion of wealth which is not 
consumed for the immediate gratification of a 
present desire, but is employed, through enter- 
prise and industry, for the production of more 
wealth. Capital is labor bottled up. And, in- 
deed, all wealth, all realized objects of human 
-desire, all that is used to-day or saved for to- 
morrow, all that contributes to man, bodily or 
mentally, is simply an embodiment of labor. 
The man who has ten thousand dollars can buy 
five thousand days' labor at two dollars a day. 
And if he can find it in the market and make in- 
telligent use of it, he can, by proxy, perform five 
thousand days' labor in one day : for capital is 
accumulated labor. Whatever a capitalist does 
with his money, therefore, whether he builds a 
manufactory, opens a mine, constructs a railroad, 
furnishes a dwelling-house, endows a college, or 
drinks it up in high wines, his money goes, ulti- 
mately, to the purchase of labor. And the man 
who buys watered stocks or a lottery ticket is 
no exception to the rule • the dupe simply pay- 
ing the rogue for the work of fool-catching. 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 15 

Returning, however, to Capital in its restricted 
sense, we are to remember that the supreme aim 
of Capital is the creation of wealth. But wealth 
is a pro-creation, being the product of the union 
of Capital and Labor. Capital, therefore, going 
forth to seek the hand of Labor, meets Labor, at 
the very threshold, in the attitude of offering 
itself to Capital. The immediate aim of Labor 
is self-preservation ; all that Labor can get in 
most countries being simply, sometimes barely, 
enough to feed the laborer, to-day, and make 
him equal to as valuable a day's work on the 
morrow. But if Labor is intelligent and educat- 
ed to higher interests, it will also strive for the 
creation of capital : first, because the more capi- 
tal there is, presupposing a sense of security, the 
more demand and the greater reward will there 
be for labor : next, because the laborer hopes, 
or should hope, by industry and frugality, to 
acquire a little capital for himself, by-and-by. 
It must be a profoundly sweet reflection to the 
child of toil, that he has a few hundred days' 
labor, bottled up in the shape of a few hundred 
dollars, and that, in misfortune or old age, he 
lias only to pour out this embodiment of labor 
and enjoy it. And every one who saves enough 
money to buy the labor of a single day, instead 
of having to do it with his own hands, is, in so 
much, a " bloated capitalist." But the unnat- 
ural conflict between Capital and Labor goes 



16 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

sadly on, the whole world being a very tumult 
of controversy as to what shall be the reward of 
labor and the condition of its service. Labor 
says to Capital : " In this work of wealth-crea- 
tion you have more than your legitimate share 
of the reward. Wages ought to be increased, so 
that when you go from comforts to luxuries, I 
may go from bare necessities to comforts. And, 
if you will not accede to my demands, I will 
muster all my forces out of the market. Your 
wheels shall stand still in engine-house and wa- 
ter-course, and you shall realize how utterly 
dependent you are upon me." "Nay, but the 
scheme of wealth-creation is mine," Capital re- 
plies, "and the governing intelligence ought to 
have a proportionate reward. Furthermore, my 
contribution to this enterprise is an investment 
which represents long years of industry and 
economy. It is accumulated labor, standing for 
the care, the intelligence, for all the energies 
of a life-time, yea, and of ancestral generations ; 
whereas your investment in the enterprise is on- 
ly of to-day, accidental, transitory, irresponsible. 
Finally, I have the advantage over you. For in 
the event of the failure of our joint enterprise, I 
have only to pour out my capital, my bottled-up 
labor, saying to one man, Go, and he will go ; 
and to another, Come, and he will come ; and 
to my servant, Do this, and he will do it. 
In a word, you wait supported by resolution 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 17 

and want ; I wait supported by resolution and 
plenty." 

Now, what will contribute to a better under- 
standing between these component forces of ma- 
terial civilization ? It is certainly easier, if not 
as satisfactory, to approach the problem nega- 
tively, and shake our heads at what will not af- 
ford a solution. Idle covet ousness will certainly 
never solve the problem: cove tons n ess is simply 
theft, unrealized for want of opportunity. Envy 
will not solve the matter: envy is simply violence, 
unrealized from fear of punishment. Vanity can 
not afford a solution of the problem : vanity is 
simply oppression, unrealized for want of power. 
And strikes, too, even to say the most for them, 
are as unsatisfactory to Labor as they are hurt- 
ful to Capital, especially when they are prompt- 
ed by interests foreign to the body of workmen 
immediately affected by them. A strike, intended 
to avenge or correct an injustice toward one who 
is not controlled and cannot be redressed by the 
employers against whom the strike is directed, 
reminds one of the story of the hodjah and the 
hare. A stranger presented the hodjah a hare, 
and, having been warmly thanked and sump- 
tuously fed, departed. By-and-by, he came 
again, but, a long time having intervened, he 
was not recognized. " Why, I am the man who 
brought you the hare," cried the stranger. 
u Ah, indeed!" said the hodjah, " come in." 



18 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

Afterward, a large company of men presented 
themselves, and, in answer to the official' s puz- 
zled look, exclaimed : " Why, we are the 
neighbors of the man who brought you the 
hare." ''Oh," said the hodjah, "come in." 
But after these were departed, sumptuously 
fed by the good man, a great multitude appear- 
ed. "And who are you?" cried the hodjah. 
' ' Why, we are the neighbors of the neigh- 
bors of the man who brought you the hare.'* 
"Hu-u-u-m!" said the hodjah, "come in." 
But instead of the plentiful feast they anticipat- 
ed, their host set before them goblets of clear, 
cold water. "This man is a fool," cried the 
multitude of guests, " to provide such entertain- 
ment as this." "Nay, gentlemen," said the 
Hodjah, "you are the neighbors of the neigh- 
bors of the man who brought the hare, and this 
feast is the broth of the broth of the hare !" 
The St. Louis strikers figured as the neighbors of 
the neighbors of a certain laborer away down in 
Texas; and every champion of labor must admit, 
however reluctantly or sorrowfully, that they 
derived nothing from their extreme neighborli- 
ness more substantial then the Hodjah's feast. 

Well, let us see what Communism will do, 
beginning with its proposed re- distribution of 
property. Here is a group of men, representing 
the different degrees of fortune and misfor- 
tune running through human society. The 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 19 

first member of this miniature Commune hav- 
ing $15,000, and the second only $5,000, the 
second says to the first : " Divide up ; acknow- 
ledge and restore the equality of Nature." The 
re- distribution occurs, giving each of the two 
men ten thousand dollars. But the other two 
members of the Commune had absolutely no- 
thing, and, therefore, just when the property- 
holders have fairly settled down upon their es- 
tates, their poor companions come upon them 
and say : " Divide up ; acknowledge the equal- 
ity and restore the equilibrium of Nature." As 
good Communists they acquiesce, and a subdi- 
vision occurs, leaving each of the men five thou- 
sand dollars ; and, all of them being sincere, the 
new order of things starts off hopefully. But 
now appears a phase of the subject never dream- 
ed of by the apostles of Communism. They 
have only carried the logic of their system to 
the point of re distribution and readjustment. 
Now, however, it transpires that one of these 
men has a genius for money -getting ; he has ac- 
quired the art of wealth- creation, and somehow, 
in the convolutions of trade, his portion begins 
to absorb the property of the others. The same 
natural differences manifest themselves in the 
two men who formerly stood with the laboring 
class. One of them shows superiority in the 
wealth of manhood, and, by a union of frugality 
and industry, begins to accumulate, while the 



20 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

other, being at once idle and improvident, loses 
his share of the subdivision to the genius or the 
prudence of others, and becomes poor and help- 
less as before. And this group is typical of the 
multitudes which constitute human society. 
The French and the English peoples unite indus- 
try with commercial tact, The Italians and the 
German peoples are more dependent upon fru- 
gality ; while the Americans, being an amalga- 
mation of so many peoples, will display some- 
thing of the economic virtues of all. But Com- 
munism is equally a blight upon genius and in- 
dustry, upon talent and economy, upon every 
thing above mediocrity. For why should men 
try to excel to-day, if the fruits of excellence 
are to be appropriated by the unworthy to-mor- 
row % Communism paralyzes hope. For, every 
man hopes, through the protection of Society, to 
better his condition, and one can live on that hope 
when one has little else to live upon. But if I, 
in want to-day, claim a share of the wealth of 
him who hoped yesterday and realizes to-day, 
to-morrow, when I may have realized my hope, 
on every to-morrow when I realize a hope, I 
must surrender it to that man who has not real- 
ized his hope, nay, to one who has never hon- 
estly tried to realize anything. Communism 
condemns itself. For, if men cannot suppress 
their covetous desire for the property of 
others, how shall they suppress the natural and 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS„ 21 

just desire to keep what they already own % In 
a word, there is but one condition upon which 
Communism can hope to succeed. With its pro- 
posed re -distribution of property, it must give 
the whole human family into the bosom of 
Nature again, praying her, the universal moth- 
er, praying God, the universal Father, for a re- 
distribution of characteristics, of tastes, of apti- 
tudes, of temperaments, of antecedents, of tal- 
ents, those gifts differing according to the grace 
of God. 

Well, what is the remedy? If Political 
Economy has any intelligent, practicable the- 
ory, if statecraft has any precedent, any experi- 
ence, that will satisfactorily answer the ques- 
tion, it has not been revealed. The co-operative 
plan, by which it is proposed to pay the laborer 
somewhat in proportion to the profits of enter- 
prise, that is so far so good. Augustus Mon- 
gredien, in his admirable work on u Wealth- 
Creation," pleads for that education of the peo- 
ple which will break the dominion of blood and 
iron : that is so far so good. The extremely 
modest statesmanship of the American Con- 
gress, which proposes to legislate experimental- 
ly, and await future light in the discharge of 
present duty — that is no doubt commendable, 
under the circumstances by which the Congress 
is conditioned. Patience is good. Patience is 
the fairest flower of human philosophy. For- 



22 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

bearance is good. Forbearance is the holy flush 
that responds to the kiss of the Gospel of 
Christ. But, recognizing the inter-dependence 
of all men and of all communities and classes, 
we must find our solution in the moral elevation 
of the entire social system, the whole human 
family. The sources of influence must be leav- 
ened. The heart of Society, throbbing in coun- 
sel-rooms, and executive chambers, and legisla- 
tive halls, in schools and colleges, in churches 
and palaces, — the heart of Society must be 
softened, purified and regenerated. And, when 
all the pulsings of the great spirit of Society 
are toward righteousness and truth, the mere 
social garb of methods, schemes and laws will 
adjust themselves as readily as the leaf to the 
type of its kind ; and the whole world shall 
approach that happy time, the song of prophets, 
the dream of philosophers and the Utopia of 
statesmen, when all men's good shall be each 
man's rule ; and labor shall be 

" A curse no more; 
Since He whose name we breathe with awe 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, — 
A poor man toiling with the poor, 
In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law." 

Enfranchised ignorance is another of the Knot# 
of our American Society. 
The Helots were a constant menace to the mHi- 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 23 

tary aristocracy of Sparta. The Sabine s were 
the early fear of Rome. The Hebrews were a 
perpetual source of anxiety to the Pharaohs of 
Egypt. And if history repeats itself against us, 
through the colored people of the South, it is 
simply because we are responsible for those 
antecedents of wrong out of which the wrathful 
judgments of history grow. 

There are two striking points of departure 
from history, however, in the relations of the 
Negro to the American system, and points of 
departure which may affect history. One is an 
omen of good, the other is prophetic of evil. 
It is a fortunate departure from history that the 
freedman is thoroughly attached to the American 
government. Gratitude, nativity, religious pas- 
sion, self-interest, hope. — all motives combine 
to unite the freedman to our institutions in the 
most tender and unswerving devotedness. And 
this intense Americanism will probably keep the 
Negro with the fortunes of the Union through- 
out all the generations of the future. But there 
is one fact which is phenomenal in the history 
of civilization, namely, that the Negroes passed 
in one moment from slavery to nominal cit- 
izenship. By one stroke of legislation, practi- 
cally speaking, and that made in the flush of 
victory, they were freed and enfranchised, and 
a social revolution was thereby enacted of which 
the history of Chios affords but a poor little 



24 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

miniature. Thus it comes about that some five 
hundred thousand men are nominally exercising 
all the functions of citizenship, holding the bal- 
lot, the sceptre of popular sovereignty, who are 
absolutely ignorant of letters and of the law. 
They are simply chess-board citizens, to be 
placed, displaced, and pushed off into the com- 
mon box, according to the will of the political 
manipulator. To-day, they are the instruments 
of malice, as against their former masters ; to- 
morrow, they will be the instruments of self- 
interest, as against their liberators. And, the 
principle of popular equality being involved, 
there remains but the one straight line of duty. 
The nation which kept them in slavery a hun- 
dred years, must keep them in school a hun- 
dred years more, if need be, until they shall 
have" learned how to wield the machinery of 
civilization, how to manage estates, how to build 
and govern cities, how to conduct manufactur- 
ing enterprises, how to hold offices of trust and 
emolument, and not abuse them; how to bear 
themselves in all the circumstances of a tumult- 
uous social life. For having been national vic- 
tims, they have become a national care, making 
the whole South a social kindergarten ; and as 
surely as God notes the sparrows when they 
fall, He will hold us responsible for their future 
as a race, and for their ultimate effect upon 
American society, 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 25 

Mormonism, although it has been tugged at a 
good deal, is a knot s^ill perplexing to states- 
men and offensive to society. Rooted among 
the mountains, two hundred thousand strong, 
Mormonism grows about in proportion as Amer- 
ica blusters about it. The evil is growing terri- 
torially as well as numerically. It is extending 
itself over all the states and territories west of 
the great plains. In Idaho, in Utah, in Arizona, 
in Nevada, almost wherever the angel of Purity 
may look down upon those fair and vast do- 
mains, there this great Upas tree has sent its 
roots, and its branches have exhaled into the 
social atmosphere the poisonous aroma of polyg- 
amy. 

But there are two causal facts about Mormon- 
ism which deserve especial notice. The first is the 
power of the priesthood. All authoritative tes- 
timony is agreed that the Mormon priesthood is 
a hierarchy at once the most despotic and the 
most corrupt that ever held sway over a deluded 
people. Conceive of a people without knowl- 
edge, and a priesthood without conscience, and 
you have the two component, negative forces of 
Mormonism. The arbitrary power of the Mor- 
mon priesthood explains the Mormon history, 
and reveals the Mormon Utopia. And the priest- 
hood constitutes the political danger of the sys- 
tem, being a politico- religious power, which, if it 
is not restrained and overthrown, will yet make 



26 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

Mor monism in its relation to the American gov- 
ernment what the Shepherd Kings were to an- 
cient Egypt, what the Jebusites on Mount Mo- 
riah were to the Israel of the days of Saul, what 
the Highlanders of Scotland were to the Eng- 
land of two hundred years ago, and what the 
Vendee was to Revolutionary France. 

But the black pepper-corn in which all the 
sins of Mormonism have their focus is its degra- 
dation of woman, through polygamy. And this 
evil is the greater still, relatively, because it ap- 
pears in the midst of a civilization very peculiar 
for its exaltation of woman. Albeit a Florence 
Nightingale has lived, embalming in deeds of 
mercy a name which shall endure through 
all times. Albeit a good queen Johanna has 
lived, whose monumental works endure, and 
whose name is glorified, in ajl the streets of 
Florence. Albeit a Semiramis has lived, the 
prototype of all the mighty individualities of 
womankind. Albeit one exalted above her kind 
has given birth to a Saviour, who, indeed, made 
it no small part of His sublime mission to disen- 
thral woman, and to lift her up out of all valleys 
of humiliation. After all this, and all these, 
Mormonism lifts itself into the light to dethrone 
her, while away off there in the mountain lands, 
some purblind souls will look out upon this 
earth and pass forever away, without having 
seen any other type of woman. But why should 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 27 

we bluster on tliis hackneyed subject? If blus- 
ter were remedial, Mormonism would have been 
annihilated long ago. For our government, our 
press, our general literature, and society itself, 
has been blustering, a whole decade or so. 
What is to be done f Well, in all that has been 
done or proposed, there seems to be no satisfac- 
tory account taken of that which forms the 
very essence of the problem, namely, the dis- 
position to be made of the polygamous women 
and their children, in the event of the over- 
throw of polygamy. For when polygamy is 
once swept away, the situation of the poly- 
gamous wife, the victim of the system, is 
such as the whole history of civilization can 
not parallel for its sad perplexity. Think of her 
a moment. She stands confronted by two pos- 
sible contingencies. One is the explicit or tacit 
legalization of polygamy : and that, that alone, 
affords her the semblance if not the conscious- 
ness, of conjugal purity and felicity. That, and 
that alone, gives her a husband and a home. 
The other possible contingency, the threatened 
contingency, is the overthrow of polygamy. 
But that casts her forth upon a strange sea, all 
alone. She knows, by the experience of many 
a sister who has broken the shackles and fled to 
the arms of society, that society has little wel- 
come for the polygamous wife. Social ostracism 
awaits her, she knows. And she must live on in 



28 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

the cold sweat of wounded pride, until she is 
borne away into that Lethean rest which flows 
just beyond, if not here, for all burden-bearers. 

Now, with these considerations before her, 
what will be the natural instincts, the inertia of 
her nature ( Why, she will simply compel her- 
self to believe in polygamy as a divine institu- 
tion. She will justify her crime as a fortress for 
her shame. 

This social problem must be approached, 
therefore, like all social problems, with a con- 
stant reference to the salvation of all the con- 
stituent elements of the community or the class 
affected ; and I pronounce any scheme of legis- 
lation, any philosophy, any gospel, which does 
not take cognizance of this element of the pro- 
blem, a mere lying, political expedient, as false 
to the heart of Nature as a paper flower. 

Charles Dickens, in his master-work of fic- 
tion, groups a number of characters for emigra- 
tion to a foreign land. A novelist, you know, 
must always have a place to put his imaginary 
personages, after he has done belaboring them, 
And you can judge a novelist best, I think, by 
the way he leads his characters off the stage. 
George Eliot always marshalled her characters 
in stateliest fashion, and their posing and their 
movements are wonderful ; but she always leads 
them off, somehow, into the dark. Charles 
Dickens always leads his characters, somehow, 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 29 

out into the sunlight. Well, these proposed 
emigrants had been unfortunate in their native 
England. Here is Peggotty, the broken- 
hearted, supporting a helpless, indigent friend. 
Here is little Emily, just returned from her 
wanderings, to gladden the heart of a father 
who had so long sought her in vain. And here 
is poor, shiftless Wilkins Micawber, too, who 
is closing his dream-life, at last, with the re- 
solve to do something, and to be something, in 
the world. But, in the conception of this mas- 
ter, the group is not yet complete. The com- 
panionships, thus far, only represent the im- 
pulse of Nature, only draw upon the surface 
waters of the soul. The master has filled his 
pen with the richest hues of the sunshine of 
charity. And so he goes into London 5 s awful 
midnight, and finds Martha, the homeless, the 
wretched, the ostracised, the lost, and she comes 
stalking forth, like a shadow from the purlieus 
of the grave. And now, the ideal group being 
complete, the good illuminating and dissipating 
the evil, the strong bearing the infirmities of 
the weak, the little company is wafted away 
into the cloud-lands of hope. 

Who wants a law, or a philosophy, or a refor- 
mation, with less of humanity in it than per- 
vades a work of the imagination % 

Perhaps the Gordian Knot of American Soci- 
ety is Intemperance. Alexander could not pro- 



30 KNOTS A:N T D WHATNOTS. 

ceed to the conquest of Asia, until the proud 
walls of Tyre had been broken down. Yon Mol- 
ke could not possess himself of the queenly city 
of Paris, until the iron power of Metz had been 
destroyed, William of Normandy could not 
crown himself over England, until the frowning 
heroes of Senlac had been beaten down. No 
more can we solve the social problem of Amer- 
ica, until we have grappled with intemperanca 
But, then, I am not here to teach you on this 
subject. You have schools of wisdom with open 
doors all around you. 

G-o into the school of Nature, the universal 
mother. There you learn that the food-king- 
dom responds to the wants of the human body 
as perfectly as forest and quarry answer to the 
needs of architecture. The essential foods are, 
therefore, found at the very door of human life. 
Nature spreads her own table and caters to her 
own children ; and every single thing set upon 
the table of Nature, whether from the mineral, 
the vegetable, or the animal kingdom, contains 
something of the constructive or force-giving 
foods necessary to the preservation and develop- 
ment of the human organism. But alcohol, 
in all its radicals, is a wicked confederacy of 
carbon with hydrogen and oxygen ; and being, 
therefore, neither food nor drink, Nature says 
to her children, straight from her own warm 
heart: "Touch not, taste not, handle not theun- 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 31 

clean thing." Go into the school of Hygiene. 
Statistics show that between the ages of twenty- 
one and thirty years, the mortality among in- 
temperate people is five times greater than 
among the temperate; while, at any given age, 
the probabilities of life are as three to one in fa- 
vor of total abstinence. Go into the school of 
Industry. Scientific observation has shown that 
those manual laborers who abstain from alcho- 
holic stimulants are at once the more enduring, 
the more fruitful, and the more trustworthy. 
Go into the school of Psychology. Dr. Mason 
of the Inebriates' Home, Fort Hamilton, Long 
Island, testifies that, of two hundred and fifty- 
two cases under his care at a given period, 
fifty-five had received a liberal education ; mer- 
chants, physicians, lawyers and clergymen being 
among the number. Go into the school of Polit- 
ical Economy. Prison records demonstrate that 
nine- tenths of all the criminals now a burden to 
the state, have come into the dungeon by the 
way of the drinking-saloon. Go into the school 
of History, and hear the testimony of the na- 
tions. Go into the sanctuary of home, the great 
school of life, and h, ar those tumultuous wit- 
nesses of the heart, the accusing angels of do- 
mestic faith, and peace, and hope, and love, whose 
voices die away at last in the sad falsetto of the 
broken-hearted mother, with only the grasses of 
the grave as pipes whereon to blow ; or feel with 



32 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

her, as thou hast a heart which responds to hu- 
man woe, the eternal heaviness of silence which 
is haunted, but never illumined, by the echo of 
voices forever hushed, and by the shadows of 
the happy time forever gone. 

Well, what shall Americans do with this 
American problem 1 

At the time of the formation of the first Co- 
rinthian league against Sparta, while the dele- 
gates were assembled, and the allied armies 
were mustered under the walls of the city, Tim- 
olaus made a speech. " There is nothing," he 
said, ''like marching straight to Sparta, and 
righting the Lacedaemonians in or near their 
own homes. We must burn the wasps in their 
nest, without waiting for them to come forth 
and sting us." Now, that is about the sentiment 
of the higher civilization in regard to intemper- 
ance. But there is an unfortunate disagree- 
ment among the apostles of reform as to where 
the wasp-nest is. For while intemperance is as 
real as Spartan power, it is also as elusive as 
Spartan diplomacy. One declares that the 
wasp-nest is in the retail drinking-saloon ; an- 
other says it is in the human heart, appetite 
creating a demand which, by the infallible laws 
of trade, will be satisfied ; while still another 
would accuse Nature, by pointing to the vine- 
yards and the fields. Constitutional prohibition 
is proposed, and legislative prohibition, and 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 33 

local option, and high-license restriction, and 
moral suasion, and crusades of sentiment. 
Well, the government that mobilizes an army 
doesn't require that every soldier's boots shall 
be made upon the same last, nor every man' s hat 
upon the same block. But having the one su- 
preme military aim in view, all methods and in- 
strumentalities are subordinated to that great 
object, and the tides of battle sweep onward. 
In such a spirit the true men and women of the 
times should enter the battles of Christian Civi- 
lization, every available weapon being used and 
every stalwart arm being raised for the onset ; 
and, all pagan fear mantled with the majesty of 
Christian hope, the armies of the Lord will 
plant the banner of Truth within the gates of 
Darkness. 

And there are floating elements, what-nots, in 
our American society. Put them in the kalei- 
doscope of thought. Here we have the tramp, or 
pedestromaniac, who is the social descendant of 
the type our English forefathers used to burn 
alive, after an honest effort to reform him. We 
have the crank, or egomaniac, who is entirely con- 
vinced that he comes into the world with a special 
commission from on high, but is quite undecided 
whether he is to play the role of angel or devil. 
We have the wheedling demagogue, who, in the 
language of Victor Hugo, mistakes a weather- 
cock for a flag. We have the foreign anarchist, 

3 



34 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS, 

who proposes to remedy the evils of society by 
the annihilation of society ; who proposes to 
roll the shadows away by blotting ont the sun. 
We have the rogue as hero, who devotes him- 
self to such a life as commands the applause of 
a low-browed and unregenerate humanity, and 
whose body, a sacrifice to sin, is followed to the 
grave by the criminal hosts of a great city, and 
laid away in solemn mockery amid the profane 
cries of a kindred multitude, These are some of 
the combustibles of our social system, which, 
properly distributed throughout the common- 
wealth, may be neutralized, or repressed into 
comparative harmlessness ; but which, if brought 
into accidental neighborhood, and given a com- 
mon motive of action, are menacingly full of 
danger to the Republic. 

The general composition of the earth's at- 
mosphere is forever the same. The invariable 
elements of oxygen and nitrogen are every- 
where present, and the variable quantities of 
hydrogen and gaseous substances are distribu- 
ted, secreted, throughout the entire mass. And 
so in the fairest of all days the great aerial 
ocean above and around us is much the same as 
in the rudest of all storms. But the changes, 
the calms and storms, are determined by the re- 
lations that chance to exist between the consti- 
tuent elements. To-day, there is sunny calm ; 
to-day, again, a sudden interflow and counterflow 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 35 

of air currents disturbs the equilibrium that ex- 
isted, and suddenly the skies are hid, and the 
face of the sun is veiled with clouds ; and all the 
mighty forces of that upper sea are marshalled 
in the wrathful lightning and the goodly rain. 
But in that calmest and fairest of all times, the 
elements of disturbance, the embryo of the 
storm, was refluent in the air, hidden in the very 
sunbeams. And as the possibilities of disturb- 
ance and convulsion are always present in the 
physical atmosphere, so in the social atmos- 
phere of America, the mysterious chemistry of 
life holds in solution the elements of all misgov- 
ernment and anarchy ; insomuch, indeed, that if 
some of our great cities were isolated from 
other communities and deprived of the legisla- 
tive and moral ballast of the whole people, it 
would be hard to overestimate the social ex- 
tremes to which they would go, as indicated by 
their present tendencies. Take the metropoli- 
tan, social elements just as they are, and if left 
to themselves, their environment narrowed to the 
city limits after the manner of democratic 
Athens, they would, perhaps, evolve almost 
every phase of civil government. In New York 
City, we should soon find the throne of govern- 
ment occupied by a commercial aristocracy ; in 
Chicago, by the Commune; in Cincinnati, by 
the Eomish priestcraft ; in New Orleans, by a 



36 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

hereditary oligarchy ; in Boston, perchance, by 
a government of inordinate self-consciousness. 

But we are inter-dependent communities. 
We are a people bearing one another's burdens. 
And over the great laboratory of American So- 
ciety, we believe that the windows of heaven 
have been opened wide, and that the .miracle- 
working sunshine will come down, flashing from 
the face of God, and that, somehow, our popu- 
lar system will develop into the higher harmo- 
nies of the divine thought of life and the divine 
order of government. 

And already great advancement has been 
made. Christian Civilization is bearing us on- 
ward and upward. Christian Civilization has 
disenthralled labor. Christian Civilization has 
driven intemperance down from the sanctuary, 
from the school-room, from legislative halls, un- 
til it seeks the darkness as its dwelling-place. 
Christian Civilization has come forth from the 
castle and the monastery, from all the fastnesses 
of feudalism and scholasticism, the true guide 
of Science and Culture, and, diffusing itself 
among the people, has proclaimed to every 
man : " Be thou worthy of freedom, and, sure as 
heaven, thou mayest be free." 

In Scandinavian cosmogony much is made of 
Igdrasil, the ash-tree of existence. It has its 
roots, they said, deep down in the death-king- 



KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 37 

dom. Its boughs are the histories of nations 
and its leaves the biographies of men, and, its 
branches extending throughout the universe, 
the rustling of the wondrous foliage is the noise 
of all human existence. Into this Igdrasil, the 
tree of universal existence, the American nation 
has been grafted by the hand of God, and al- 
ready it has become an overshadowing branch. 
It is now the care of the people, committed unto 
them by Him who purgeth and taketh away. 

But we want, now, a great, plentiful infusion 
of those two component forces of civilization, 
namely, Christian education and Christian re- 
generation. We want Christian education as 
the social husbandman, that the foliage of na- 
tional life may blossom into the crown of fruit- 
fulness ; Christian regeneration at the roots of 
the tree, that the death-kingdom may beautify 
and glorify into the life-kingdom, evermore. 
And, thus suffused by the underlying, the indwel- 
ling and the overshadowing x>resence of God, 
let us discern that we are able thereby to lay fast 
hold upon the grand objectives of our national 
life. Let us believe in our future, because we 
believe in God. Let us welcome our national 
task as the great opportunity of history. Let 
us fear national wrong-doing more than national 
defeat. Let us do right toward all peoples. Let 
us make our flag the symbol of justice as well 



38 KNOTS AND WHAT-NOTS. 

as of liberty. Let us put on the whole armor 
of civilization and the whole armor of God, and, 
then, even when midnight storms are upon us, 
we shall witness the omnipotent coming of Him 
whose goings forth are from of old, from ever- 
lasting. 



Seek not Thine Own 



SEEK not thine own : 
The law of living 
Is naught but giving. 
The bee, that flies 
Where wooed by many a smiling flower with 

fragrant lips, 
^fathers reciprocal the blooming life it sips ; 
Some flower, forspent, 
Receives the germ equivalent 
Which fructifies. 

Seek not thine own : 
In all the ages, 
Heroes and sages 
By gifts are known. 
The world esteems them great and good who, 

living, shed 
The gift of light upon the world. They being 
dead. 

Are living still, 
In monuments past human skill, 
In brass or stone. 

Seek not thine own : 
Forever giving 
Is royal living, 
While good endures. 
Fruitful self-sacrifice to Him the Father sent 
Shall get thee all : the world and bright-orbed 
firmament, 

Or life, or death, 
Lo ! the All -giver, faithful, saith : 
" All things are yours." 



The Spirit of the Times. 

A SERMON. 
"Watchman, what of the night?" — Is. xxi. 11. 

ISAIAH lived and prophesied in an age when 
war was the supreme occupation of man- 
kind. The nations had little intercourse with 
one another, except the rude kind necessitated 
by the challenge, the armistice, the parley and 
the battle-cry, or, after the trial of force, the 
bitter contact of master and slave. There was 
no international law, no sense of international 
obligation. The whole fabric of ancient civiliza- 
tion, indeed, was formed after a military model, in- 
somuch that even many of the songs of religion 
were mere battle-hymns, going about in a livery 
of sanctimonious words. 

This martial state of ancient society necessitat- 
ing a permanent system of defence, and constant 
alertness against an ever-approaching foe, all 
cities were fortified ; and, in all these fortified 

(40) 



THE 8PIEIT OF THE TIMES. 41 

towns, watchmen were employed to give an alarm, 
from the wall, or the gate, or the watch-tower, 
at the approach of any danger, or to reassure 
the anxious city, at regular intervals, by the 
cheerful proclamation that all was well. The 
very ancient Hebrews, imitating the Egyptians, 
divided the night into three equal parts of four 
hours each, calling them, respectively, the first 
watch, the middle watch and the morning watch. 
But when the Romans became masters of Pal- 
estine, they introduced the custom of reckoning 
the night in four watches of three hours each, 
a custom borrowed more originally from the 
Greeks. 

This particular passage from Isaiah is gen- 
uinely significant of his times ; so that if we 
restrict the prophesy to a literal and specific in- 
terpretation, having reference to two rival cities, 
lines of history parallel with the life of the 
prophet would furnish abundant fulfillment. 
If, on the other hand, we take a larger view of 
the text, and invest it with a remote, spiritual 
sense, the terms employed are all the more 
meaningful, if we take account of the tumultuous 
times in which they were uttered. For as the 
genius of war, in those rude times, often dis- 
guised herself in the habiliments of religion, so 
the messages of religion were best understood 
and most effective when clothed in the imagery 
of war : and the words of Jehovah to his chosen 



42 THE SPIKIT OF THE TIMES. 

people were so chosen and grouped as to fit the 
popular understanding, and even the popular 
tastes, that the substance of the message, the 
essential truth, might the more readily win and 
secure the popular heart. We may, therefore, 
think of these cities as a fictitious vehicle of 
divine truth, or we may think that a real inci- 
dent of the times is here turned to account, by 
the inspired man, as a spiritual object-lesson. 

The paragraph containing the text reads, 
according to Lowth' s translation, as follows: — 

"The oracle concerning D,umah : 

A voice crieth to me from Seir, 
' Watchman, what of the night ; 

Watchman, what of the night? ' 

The watchman replieth, 

s The morning cometh, and also the night 

If ye will inquire, inquire ye ; come again.' " 

Now, the passage has been explained as hav- 
ing probable reference to the destruction of 
Dumah, one of the cities of the Ishmaelities, by 
the people of Seir. The inhabit ants of Seir hav- 
ing inquired of the prophet the specific time 
when God had commissioned them to march 
against Dumah, the prophet replied: "The 
morning — the time of triumph to righteous Seir — 
cometh ; and the night cometh, also — the night 
of utter discomfiture to your foes, the wicked 
inhabitants of Dumah." 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 43 

Accepting this interpretation, let tis accommo- 
date the text, to-day, to an important spiritual 
inquiry, Seir representing, in a figure, the Chris- 
tian Church, and Dumah standing for the world 
of error and sin. The inhabitants of the Christ- 
ian Seir, the disciples of Christ, the King, are 
full of anxiety in this century of transitions, and 
they inquire, with a tremulous stress on every 
syllable of the inquiry : "What of the night? 
Watchman on the walls of Zion, what of the 
night V May not the Christian ministry reply, 
in a tone of assurance justified by the spirit of 
the times, that the morning cometh ? 

It is somewhat fashionable to speak of this age 
as if it were peculiarly one of unbelief. Good 
men persuade themselves that the world is 
growing more depraved ; that the Christian 
Church has entered upon a period of retrogres- 
sion ; that agnosticism and rationalism have per- 
plexed the champions of the Bible ; and that prac- 
tical sin is overshadowing the agencies of the 
Gospel. And this sentiment is so much abroad 
as to have found its way into the Church, induc- 
ing much lethargy, suggesting compromise, and 
almost paralyzing many of the grandest schemes 
of Christian benevolence and evangelization. 
This gloomy, pessimistic view of things may be 
traced, I think, to causes which prove the direct 
opposite of that view, and which afford the most 
gladsome signs of human progress. 



44 THE SPIKIT OF THE TIMES. 

The wickedness and the unbelief of the pre- 
sent age seem relatively greater than in former 
times, because, in the first place, men are more 
fully acquainted with each other's thoughts and 
actions than ever before. A knowledge of all 
events is transmitted to all men. almost instan- 
taneously. The telegraph, its nerves of steel 
diverging into the obscurest corners of the 
earth, eavesdroppers at all the key-holes of civ- 
ilization, and converging again to the great 
news-centres, unloads itself upon the columns 
of great dailies, extras, weeklies, semi-weeklies, 
tri-weeklies, bi-weeklies, monthlies, reviews, 
annuals and perennials. The types are the gos- 
sips of the nineteenth century, and they go 
whispering everything, everywhere, in all places 
of their dominion. And these newspapers do 
not make it a part of their mission to discrimi- 
nate between the evil and the good. They are 
news-gatherers, pre-eminently, exclusively, tak- 
ing strict account of all that happens in all the 
world ; and, at the regular subscription price, 
i 'post-paid to any address/' they will transmit 
you the whole bitter-sweet story of the doings 
of your fellow-men. Well, it were strange, in- 
deed, if the aggregate of human activities, 
prompted and directed as they are by every 
variety of motive, did not fill some minds with 
apprehension for the future of the human fam- 
ily. But this news-gathering genius is newer 



THE SPIEIT OF THE TIMES. 40 

to the world than a news-foundered age can 
very well realize. Fifty years ago, and ever be- 
fore that time, each community was practically 
isolated from all others, by reason of the slow 
means of communication then enjoyed. Events 
which happened only a few puffs of the loco- 
motive from your grandfather's house were not 
known there for weeks, perhaps months, after 
their occurrence. The battle of New Orleans, 
closing our last war with England, was fought 
on the eighth day of January, 1815, but the 
news of the battle, spurred on though it was by 
the joyful enthusiasm of victory, did not reach 
Washington until the fourth day of February, 
almost four weeks afterward. If it was a mat- 
ter of so much tedious difficulty to transmit 
news of the greatest events, decisive of the des- 
tinies of nations and of mankind, men would 
hardly trouble themselves to publish abroad 
every local incident which might have disturbed 
the annals of a quiet neighborhood. Or if, in- 
deed, men had chosen to be newsmongers of 
the lower order, they would scarcely have been 
rewarded with popular favor : for why should 
people be curious to know what the bride wore 
on her wedding-day, if the honey-moon is al- 
ready past ? Why should people crave the de- 
tails of a family quarrel, after a reconciliation 
has been effected ? 
This world of the fathers presented to us, 



46 THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

through their vigorous, youthful, buoyant im- 
pressions of it, and favored by that popular rev- 
erence for the past, that gaudy kind of hero- 
worship which never finds a hero until he is 
dead, and all opportunities for helpful fellow- 
ship with him forever gone— those simple, 
manly times are very much glorified by the rare 
old pilgrims who linger to weep over the sins of 
the present age. But do they not take the crim- 
inal record of the past from the isolated com- 
munity in which they lived, and that of the pre- 
sent from all lands made one by the types and 
the telegraph % Do they not weigh the experi- 
ence and observation of one against the ex- 
perience and observation of the ten thousand 
news-gatherers who are speaking to them 
through the morning papers 1 

Oh, thou embattled, fainting, disconsolate sol- 
dier of the cross, be of good cheer ! Is thy heart 
distracted with the tumultuous effrontery of mod- 
ern sin, and the clanging cymbals of modern hy- 
pocrisy % Be of good cheer ; thou hearest, to- 
day, the very breath of the solitudes of sin, 
swept unto thee through all the whispering gal- 
leries of the nations, and when the lines of con- 
fusion and the plummet of emptiness are lifted 
away, it is the decisive victory. Is thy heart 
wounded for others' transgressions, and on ac- 
count of social ills, and about all the woes and 
cares and buffetings that disturb the calm of ev~ 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 47 

ery true soul \ Be of good cheer ; thou feelest, 
to-day, all the pulsings of the heart of the great 
world ; and wherever thou shalt hide thyself, 
though it be in the mountain haunts of some Eip 
Tan Winkle, or in the sombre shades of a Sleepy 
Hollow, this world will sweep in upon thee with 
all its tides of activity, and all its conflicting voi- 
ces shall speak to thee ; but what thou feelest 
and nearest, now, is the voice and body of all hu- 
man ills ; and the miracle of healing shall be 
the transfiguration of all humanity ! 

The world makes a bad impression upon itself, 
again, because evil deeds are always and diligent- 
ly proclaimed, while good deeds are often left to 
their own modest, monumental silence. " No 
news % that's always good news," the people say. 
And Bacon declares that the best times to live in 
are the worst to read about ; after which it is 
hardly necessary to say that the community, or 
the times, whose progress lies altogether in the 
paths of peace, will furnish but few events spicy 
enough for the news-gatherer, or conspicuous 
enough for the historian. AVhat of the ten thou- 
sand obscure heroes who in every period finish 
unseen battles, and pass, unheralded of men, 
into the presence of Him who seeth in secret 
but rewardeth openly ? What of the silent mul- 
titude of fathers, mothers, wives, husbands and 
children, who faithfully and devotedly fulfil all 
the obligations growing out of their manifold 



48 THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

relationships, and to the last hour reflect honor 
upon their kind? Oh, the world doesn't charge 
itself with the duty of publishing abroad the in- 
sipid history of uneventful goodness ! That is 
commonplace, a matter of course ; that is only 
conformity to the laws of civilization. It is 
divergence from law, rebellion against law, a 
defect or a smash-up in the social machinery, of 
which the world talks and takes cognizance. 
And so, if to a thousand happy, peaceful homes 
one wife-murder, or fratricide, or divorce scan- 
dal occurs, it is directly trumpeted into the ears 
of all mankind, and the reading public, forget- 
ting the unobtrusive examples of righteousness 
to be numbered by the myriads, &x. their in- 
dignant attention upon the one criminal, and 
conclude that society is going down to ruin. 

A national administration undertakes to guide 
the ship of state through the tides and cloud- 
lands that follow civil war. The problem of 
maintaining the public credit, of reconstructing 
states lately in rebellion, of adjusting foreign 
complications, — all these, and the ever-rising 
problems of internal government, demand intelli- 
gent solution. The President calls about him 
counsellors of national repute; all the depart- 
ments of state are manned and managed under 
the public eye, and the scrutiny of a hyper- 
critical press ; subordinate secretaries, special 
agents, representatives at foreign courts, treaty 



THE SPIRIT OE THE TIMES. 49 

commissioners, department clerks, receivers of 
revenues, and all the thousands of government 
servants necessary to the machinery of a great 
nation, are gathered from all sections of the 
Union. But all this administrative machinery 
attracts little attention, comparatively, so long 
as every man does his duty and is loyal to his 
trust. 

But let one of the heads of departments de- 
fraud the government, or a Congressman specu- 
late in Credit Mobelier stocks, or let a mail con- 
tractor maraud the public treasury, through a 
superfluous or fictitious Star- Route system, and 
the deeds and names of such men will be better 
known than those of the most honorable and de- 
voted servants of the people. And that has 
been the social habit, throughout all generations. 
The world talks more about the prodigal than 
the dutiful son. The world looks at the way- 
ward comets more than at the fixed stars. The 
world never knows that there is an Ash tabula- 
bridge until it tumbles down ; seldom knows a 
Brutus for the good that is in him, but only 
when he slays a Caesar and exhibits the evil that 
is in him. 

"Watchman, what of the night?" Let us 
answer the question as a popular inquiry, by 
a brief study of the forces opposed to Christian- 
ity. And we may resolve them all, perhaps, 
into the comprehensive evils of Injustice and 

4 



50 THE SPIEIT OF THE TIMES. 

Paganism; for all crimes that affect human 
society, and of which human laws take cog- 
nizance, are simply different phases of injustice, 
and there is hardly any kind of denial of Grod 
that is not a species of paganism — paganism 
being simply the worship of the creature instead 
of the Creator, whether this having other gods 
before Him is done ignorantly or wilfully. 
Injustice comprehends, however, not only those 
social laws which contravene the natural and in- 
alienable rights of the individual, but also those 
acts of the individual which transgress the 
righteous laws of Society, together with all con- 
duct or teaching that is anywise hurtful to any 
of the manifold interests over which human 
society reasonably claims guardianship. Disre- 
gard of the sacredness of life, political venality, 
tyranny, insurrection, untruthfulness, intem- 
perance, the oppression of the toiling poor, and 
those cruel persecutions of the weak, involved, 
so often, in the aggrandizement of the strong, 
are among the elements of injustice ; and may 
we not trust that, on all these lines, the world 
has passed its midnight hour ? Do we lament, 
for example, a facility of conscience and of pub- 
lic sentiment as to the sacredness of human 
life 3 Christianity has struggled through times 
when, in France, one might kill a French noble- 
man for six hundred pieces of gold, equivalent 
to about $1,700 ; a Roman for half as much ; one 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 51 

of the common people for one-third that 
amount ; while the life of a slave was valued at 
fifty pieces of gold, or about $140. And this 
depreciation of human life appears in the paral- 
lel history of every European nation ; and the 
times are comparatively recent when the crime 
of murder was oftener avenged by the kinsmen 
of the slain than by the majesty of the law ; 
when assassination was the only recognized es- 
cape from tyranny, and when men, almost uni- 
versally, appealed, for the adjustment of differ- 
ences, to their swords instead of their magis- 
trates. We have not altogether outgrown our 
inheritance yet, for the genius of murder is still 
abroad in all guises and disguises, in iron boots 
and slippers of sunbeams, defiantly showing his 
own death's head, and skilfully concealed un- 
der all his political, judicial and philosophical 
masks. But the world is beginning, in some 
slow measure, to discriminate between force and 
justice, and that discrimination is lifting the 
windows of the morning. 

Do we hear the murmur of righteous indigna- 
tion against venality in the public service, and- 
the corruption that runs down through legisla- 
tive halls, and into municipal and commercial 
affairs \ Well, the crimes of the past cannot 
excuse, even if they explain, the crimes of the 
present; but venality certainly had its climax 
some centuries ago, when the Praetorian Guards 



52 THE SPIEIT OF THE TIMES, 

offered the empire of Rome at public auction, 
and Julianns as publicly bought it in for some 
ten millions of dollars ; nor will history let us 
forget that, only two hundred years ago, a 
voluptuous English king retained, at a stipulat- 
ed price, the dignified English Parliament, and 
that a foreign king afterwards bribed this same 
national legislature into pursuing a policy 
diametrically opposed to the loyal interests 
they were sworn to champion. Those were 
times, indeed, when bribe-giving was almost 
mistaken for generosity, and corruption for 
amiability. 

Do we not mourn the falsehoods, and all the 
shams and follies, and all the deceitf illness, of a 
pretentious age? " Children have their play- 
things," said the Macedonian Philip, "and 
oaths are the playthings of men." And while 
there were men of probity, like Cyrus and Bra- 
sias, truth-loving, faith -keeping, in those olden 
times, yet this saying of Philip portrays the 
almost universal practice and sentiment of the 
ancient world. " I am much more pleased iD 
having lost a kingdom, which I may recover," 
said a Christian king, "than I should have been 
had I, through perfidy, lost my honor, which 
can never be recovered." And this exaltation 
of honor above fortune now belongs, essentially, 
to the ethics of every-day life, as well as to the 
commercial and political realms ; and the lie, 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 53 

however prevalent still, has lost popular favor 
and indulgence, forever. 

And at whatever angle we look backward up- 
on history, we certainly find that more or less 
progress has been made. If we speak of perse- 
cution for opinion's sake, what civilized nation, 
to-day, would reproduce a St. Bartholomew's-day 
massacre, or a Spanish Inquisition, or the 
"Bloody Assizes," or would revive the awful ge- 
nius displayed in the invention of the guillotine \ 
If we speak of national or autocratic aggrandize- 
ment, what government would re-enact, or be 
permitted to re-enact, the partition of Poland, 
the enslavement of Italy, the systematic extinc- 
tion of barbarian tribes, or a cruel stroke of 
policy like that performed Feb. 13, 1692, by 
the Scotch representatives of the English gov- 
ernment, when all the people of Glencoe were 
slain about their own hearth -fires, that for all 
the turbulent Highlands " one terrible and 
memorable example might be made." 

If we speak of the oppression of the toiler, 
and the meagre compensation of manual labor, 
we should not forget that through many cen- 
turies, until very recent times, indeed, the his- 
tory of labor has been the history of slavery, 
feudalism, penal service, and menial apprentice- 
ships ; or of freedom miserably sustained, and 
accompanied with political disfranchisement and 
social ostracism. If we speak of the night of 



54 THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

Intemperance, finally, and of the manifold ills 
that walk in its darkness, may we not hope, even 
in the midst of our lamentations, that the morn- 
ing cometh \ 

The morning cometh ! Tyranny, oppression, 
persecution, intemperance, venality, fraud, mur- 
der ; disregard of truth, of sanctity, and of the 
equal rights of men, and all the gloomy attributes 
of the hydra-headed monster of Injustice, have 
felt the ascending power of the Lion of Judah. 
We may not sleep, for Civilization's morning 
nap has almost turned back, even now, the cha- 
riots of day ; but we may cheer on our courage 
with bur hope. For there is, indeed, a promise 
of victory. There is a flush upon the sky ! 
There is laughter among the stars ! The mel- 
ody of dawn is in the air ! There is a heavenly 
tumult at all the gates of darkness, and the 
shadows are rolling away, buffeted by the wings 
of the morning ! 

" Watchman, what of the night P Answer- 
ing this question in its relation to paganism, we 
may rejoice in the indisputable fact that Chris- 
tianity has acquired the ascendency, and is now 
the dominant system of the world ; that every 
civilized ruler is a defender of the faith ; and 
that the apostolic fathers and those noble mar- 
tyrs of the Protestant Reformation who died in 
the shadow of a despised Cross, are the heroes 
of a history that shall never repeat itself, and 



THE SPIETT OF THE TIMES. 55 

the victims of a spirit of hatred that is forever 
extinguished. For this is an age which not only 
multiplies disciples, but which breathes the 
Christian spirit abroad among the unsaved and 
the unbelieving, pervading the conscience, where 
it does not win the allegiance of the people ; 
leavening and sanctifying, even when failing to 
subdue, the human will. And so, while it is one 
kind of evidence of Christian progress that 
Christianity holds the keys of earthly power, 
and is able to overthrow any Nero that the uni- 
ted paganism of the world might champion, it is 
certainly a stronger proof of the triumjohant 
spread of the Gospel, that paganism itself does 
not develop the spirit of a ISTero in these brighter 
days. This overshadowing of paganism with 
the majesty and love of Christ is the way of vic- 
tory. This outwaf ting, pervading, leavening spirit 
of the Gospel has pioneered every gracious in- 
cursion that Christianity has made into heathen 
lands. We have seen the proud citizen of Rome 
forsake the temples that were consecrated by the 
ancestral faith and worship of centuries. We 
have seen the learned Greek depart from the 
pantheon of his holy mountain, hearkening to 
the foolishness of preaching. We have seen the 
Northman forsake thn rude worship of Woden 
and Thor, cherishing the Christian's hope of im- 
mortality. We have seen the dusky multitudes 
of Africa, the lowliest of mankind, outgrowing 



5Q THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

the degradations of Nature and the inhumanity 
of man, through the miracle-working Gospel. 
But these conquests were not made, altogether, 
by pentecostal showers. They had their obscure 
beginnings in some Christian graft upon the 
pagan tree. Some promise of the Gospel they 
embraced, perhaps of the life that now is, pos- 
sibly of the life which is to come ; and having- 
tasted the fruit of the Gospel, they were finally 
persuaded to forsake and renounce their old 
worship and their old habits of life, and accept 
Christ as a personal Saviour, And over all forms 
of paganism the Gospel spirit is brooding, to-day. 
In Buddhism, and all Oriental systems, there is a 
magnetic wave throbbing Christward. And, by- 
and-by, very soon, let us hope, the Buddhist 
will cease his idle longings after the false heaven 
of Nirvana, the Zoroastran will forsake his inde- 
cisive conflict between light and darkness, and 
the Mohammedan shall grow weary of the relig- 
ion of the sword. And all these, as the sands of 
the sea-shore for multitude, shall come weary 
and soul-hungry to the love-feast of the Gospel 
It will be a day of gladness in Zion, We poor 
disciples, with our limited store of missionary 
wisdom and zeal, may be as helpless, though as 
solicitous, as the Galilean fishermen were with 
their handful of barley-cakes. But if the same 
Master is still in the midst, the grass of the wil- 
derness shall be the table of the Lord again, and 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 57 

fragments of the Bread of Life, borne by the 
humblest disciples to the hands of a miracle- 
working Saviour, shall increase to satisfying 
portions ; and from all unholy shrines, from all 
desolate temples, from all empty creeds, the 
people shall be saved. 

Yea, Christ is King! On pagan shrines 

All incense-fires are "bnrning low ; 
In every land His wisdom shines, 

In every heart His love shall glow ; 
And all the nations ransomed sing, 
" The Nazarine is Lord and King !" 

And this exultation of Christian hope is justified 
by the missionary records of the present cen- 
tury. The number of missionaries, of mission 
schools, of converts to Christ, of pupils under 
Christian training, and of all the factors of pro- 
gress have increased marvellously ; while the 
friendly attitude of Oriental governments and 
philosophies proves how little the figures tell 
of the Christian sentiment refluent in a spiritless, 
ill-assured paganism. 

Paganism comprehends infidelity. All unbe- 
lief is paganism, however refined or civilized it 
may be ; for those who have not given their 
hearts to Christ have given them to some other 
object of adoration. The human heart will find 
a God as surely as the mountain torrent will find 
the sea. It may be tossed and broken by the 
rocks on the mountain-side, or lose its tortuous 



58 THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

way among the grasses and forests of the plain, 
or be absorbed by the proud current of the 
mighty river. But after all zig-zaggings the rest 
of the great deep will come. Unbelief, after all, 
is simply heart- wandering. And when we look 
into unbelief to its very depths, we can hardly 
call this age one of infidelity. Indeed, a simple 
statistical comparison will encourage us to be- 
lieve that unbelief is relatively on the decline, It 
appears that, in the year 1S00, the evangelical 
communicants in the United States numbered but 
365,000, being only some 7 per cent, of the pop- 
ulation. In 1850, there were 3,529,000 commu- 
nicants, fifteen per cent, of the population. In 
1870, there were 6,673,000 communicants, being 
seventeen per cent, of the population. In 1880, 
the number of communicants had risen to above 
10,000,000, a little more than 20 per cent, of the 
population of 50,000,000. The increase of popu- 
lation, therefore, since the year 1800, has been 
but nine-fold, while the increase in evangelical 
church membership has been twenty-seven 
fold, three times greater than the growth of the 
population. Indeed, we have little reason to be 
panic-stricken on the subject of modern infidel- 
ity. It is demonstrative, proud, boastful, and 
liberty of speech has made it aggressive ; while 
the Christian Church, conscious of established 
influence with the people, can afford to be tole- 
rant, and to go on in its appointed work. In- 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 59 

deed, this activity on the part of unbelief is sim- 
ply characteristic of the times. 

This age is permitted to say, and, that elastic 
liberty being comparatively new to the world, is 
quite busy in saying, just what it thinks. In the 
matter of their creeds, therefore, men are willing 
to expunge, or qualify, what they cannot con- 
scientiously subscribe. And doubts are pro- 
claimed as boldly as the creeds. Gibbon and 
Voltaire assailed Christianity with the subtle 
force of literary genius, and they had their dis- 
ciples by the myriads, who said in their hearts, 
" There is no God." But modern infidelity 
clothes itself with all the vivacity and boldness 
of public speech, producing a platform exhibi- 
tion of unbelief, and bringing together all the 
unbelieving, the curious and the depraved, from 
all their hiding-places in the great city. But 
these are not schooled by any literature of un- 
faith. They are only looking about for some 
philosophy that will narrow itself and torture 
itself to their dwarfed lives ; some rational doubt 
that will pull away the goads of conscience, and 
uproot the tenacious faith that accompanied in- 
nocent childhood, and drown the memory of a 
mother's prayers ; or indeed, their tumultuous 
applause of infidelity may be only the feint of 
warfare by which they cover their retreat to the 
Father' s House. Every knee shall bow. Every 
tongue shall confess. When all France was 



60 THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

professedly given over to infidelity, even then, 
nine- tenths of the people of France, when dying, 
begged for a Christian burial. That is a history 
which will repeat itself wherever doubt plants 
her monuments of imagined victory. And even 
the most brilliant scatter-brains who can charm 
away the impulsive faith of an ignorant mul- 
titude, or plant his gilded shafts of rhetoric, 
poisoned with doubt, in the glowing hearts of 
intelligent youth ; even he may find a resting- 
place, at last, urged by the longings of a soul 
that honestly trembles amid the ruins of his 
own vain philosophy, in the bosom of Him who 
can save even unto the uttermost all them that 
come unto God by Him. To many wavering 
hearts, in many times, the" iron finger of death 
has been the magnet of a living faith. 

" Watchman, what of the night 2" The morn- 
ing cometh. There are monstrous evils still in 
many hiding-places. But when you open a 
dungeon to the sunlight, that most powerful 
chemical agency in all the laboratory of the uni- 
verse, it cannot do its work instantaneously. If 
the fatal gases are lurking there, and you enter 
with the first sunbeam, you suffer as if in the 
dark Even the miracle-working sunlight must 
have time for its miracles. The world was just 
such a dungeon when the Sun of Righteousness 
arose upon it, and every ray of light has done 
its miracle of exorcism or of healing. And 



THE SPIBIT OF THE TIMES. 61 

these times are brighter and better for every 
year of the Gospel ministry. We have an increas- 
ing Christ. And in all fragments of thought, in 
all schools, libraries, newspaper offices, legisla- 
tive halls ; in ail homes and all philosophies, the 
trend is Christ ward. The spirit of the times is a 
Gospel spirit, If hope and zeal be the yoke -fel- 
lows of our toil, and Christ be to ns all and in 
all, we shall not believe in vain, neither labor in 
vain. Christ is King ! He is coming ! The her- 
alds are here, and His triumphal entry will not 
be delayed. 

" Do ye not see, upon the mountain tops, 

Beacon to beacon answering ? Who can tell 

But all the harsh and dissonant sounds, which long 

Have been — are still disquieting the earth, 

Are but the tuning of the various parts 

For the grand harmony, prelusive all 

Of that vast chorus which shall usher in 

The hastening triumph of the Prince of Peace? 

Yes ; his shall be the kingdom. He shall come, 

Ye scoffers at his tarrying ! Hear ye not, 

Even now, the thunder of His wheels ? Awake, 

Thou slumbering world ! Even now, the symphonies 

Of that blest song are floating through the air, 

Peace be on earth, and glory be to God." 



T 



Christ the King. 

A CHRISTMAS ECHO. 

HE skies are dark o'er Salem's brow, 
The world is hushed in holy calm, 

The bruised nations meekly bow, 

And sigh for heaven's all-healing balm, 

While seers of Juda hopeful sing, 

" Lo, Shiloh comes ! The King, the King ! ?? 

Lo, Shiloh comes ! His star is high, 

And fair as proud Orion's band ; 
His shafts of glory arch the sky, 

His glance of peace is on the land ; 
And o'er the land the angels sing 

"A Saviour comes ; the Christ is King ! " 

Now, from the thousand gates of song, 
That open wide around the throne, 

All heaven's bright, seraphic throng 
To Him then glad allegiance own, 

And all the earth, in wonder sings, 

" The peasant babe is King of kings ! n 

Come, wayward heart, thy tribute pay 

To Him who suffered all for thee, 
Whose feet have pressed the stony way 

And borne the nails upon the tree : 
Love's gift of life He comes to bring, 

Rebellious nature, own thy King. 

Yea, Christ is King ! On pagan shrines, 

All incense-fires are burning low ; 
In every land His wisdom shines, 

In every heart His love shall glow j 
And all the nations, ransomed sing, 

" The Nazarene is Lord and King ! " 
(62) 



DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION, 

AN ORATION. 



DEVELOPMENT and Revelation are the 
component forces of human society, and 
Christian civilization is the resultant which re- 
presents their perfect companionship. Nature 
has been so much in rebellion against man, and 
man so much in rebellion against God, that these 
factors of growth have often seemed out of har- 
mony with each other. In one ethnos, or one 
epoch, we find a finished society, wanting only the 
quickening of the divine life, and the crown of 
the divine light ; in another age, or another com- 
munity, a kindly revelation, waiting only for the 
seed-ground. Along one line of history, we have 
the record of development without revelation ; as 
of a Gautama Buddha, his foot upon the world 
and his heart in the skies, longing for Nirvana, 
the heaven of nihilism ; as of a sturdy Northman, 
his song filled at once with the praise of Thor 
and the faint Drophecy of a Christ ; as of a Sim- 

(63) 



64 DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 

eon, waiting for the consolation of Israel; as of a 
Plato, looking from Olympus toward Sinai, and 
above his own cloudland, in the clear blue of Mo- 
saism, discerning the twilight x>f the knowledge 
of the glory of God. Along another line of his- 
tory, there would seem to be revelation without 
development : Paul preaching the Gospel of 
the resurrection to the Athens of Phidias and 
Zeno ; Moses delivering the law of Jehovah to 
the worshippers of a molten image ; the Christ 
weeping over Jerusalem. But these apparent 
discords belong only to the object-glass. Reve- 
lations are not wasted upon the world. In the 
great crucible of activities where history is made, 
the hero is always found to have an affinity for 
his age, whether he is simply the product of 
social evolution, or a Messiah, come to proclaim 
a Gospel. And, if the world must appear to 
wait centuries for the footsteps of God, His om- 
nipotent arm extends forward over all waste- 
places, so that when the warp and woof of a civ- 
ilization is complete, it bears, after all, the stamp 
of the Divine will. Somehow, faithful as the sun 
to them that wait for the morning, the comings of 
the Lord have determined the destinies of the na- 
tions. But while we recognize, everywhere, the 
operations of the Divine will, the philosophy of 
history compels a distinction between society, 
as the product of development, and society as 
the creature of revelation. Nor is it neces- 



DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 65 

sary, in doing this, to break what Max Muller 
has denominated "The sacred context of his- 
tory ;" nor yet need we take npon our hearts to 
answer for him that other and harder knot of 
questions — " How there could ever have been a 
veil between Truth and the seeker of Truth ; be- 
tween the adoring heart and the object of the 
highest adoration ; between the Father and His 
children." Now, I take religion to be the ori- 
gin of nationality. "A people exists," says 
Sehelling, ' ' only when it has determined itself 
with regard to its mythology." And while we 
would degrade mythology into paganism, we 
should remember that the nations of antiquity 
beautified it into a revelation, held to it as em- 
bodying their purest idea of the Infinite; adorned 
it, in letters and art and philosophy, with a ge- 
nius more enduring than their faith ; and in 
their mythology they had a heaven, too, even 
though it might have been, as with the Greeks, 
a heaven of infinite sensuality. Whatever stage 
of development a given people may attain, 
therefore, whether they are a simple society 
with unstable government, or possess all the ma- 
chinery of the most complex society, the germ 
of nationality is religion. The social compact 
begins at the altar, rather than the throne. 
The priest came before the king. And all those 
factors which go into the product to-day called 
society — the arts and sciences, the elements of 



03 DEVELOPMENT AND KBYELATLOM. 

avil governments the symbolism :: lomestk 
life — they all pi seed from the growth sad :r- 

ferea::; ::;r >i tha: alrrnarr gem rallea reLrg- 
i )ii 

: what is :"_e sphere :: levelopment 1 To 

what is "r"r-7Zri: :. aerraare : Ii a ~:::, 

og ill the phenomena nt modern civilization, 



Including the Institutions :: Christianity per :r. 
how many ?f these phenomena may be traced to 
social evolution as an efficient cause, and how 
many fee revelation When and wherein must 
revelation snpplement leveLrpneiar I Resolve 
society into its simple elements, and then study 
them as they grow, now by the light :: archeo- 
Logy and o w ; the light :: history, and you 
shall find that all these elemezirs. aarex 5mg- 
gling upwm Ito a limited legree, j anse and waif 
foi the light :: heaven . failing :r "_::!_ :'_t7 
fcallize and then are 5 _ ept away. Science 
reaches :~a: aftei the law ;: Nature. F:r :a.e 
sake :: iivisa d ::"_..'.:: there come sub-divis- 
ions 3i lifferentiations :: Science; r ologies mul- 
tiply, and the specialists _: forth :. liscover. 
each :'-- rJarraare. frarner.ra.rr rrrirh lying in hia 
>wn pathway, all hoping tc merge intc t"_t ::n- 
n:r highway at last, and construct :: then frag- 
ments, a true Science it Mature. A Linnaeus 
is commissioned tc analyze the flowers, aHutton 
:. classify the rocks, a Hypparchus :: tabulate 
the stars. But whe shall measure and lescribe 



DEVELOPMENT AND EEVELATION. 67 

for ns the dark, narrow, labyrinthine way through 
which the sciences are laboring toward perfec- 
tion % Who shall prophesy the riper time, when 
these sciences shall come out into the white sun- 
light, look up into the face of truth, and feel the 
throbbiogs of a common ancestry and of a sacred 
brotherhood % 

When Geology was, at length, divorced from 
Cosmology, Astronom} r from Astrology, and the 
science of plants from quacks and wizzards, it 
was only that they might become the willing 
concubines of false religion ; and this alliance 
has continued, to the almost equal detriment 
of Science and of Religion, down to recent times. 
If Nature, therefore, may find reason to laugh 
at her children for their ignorance of God, the 
invisible Father, how much more must she not 
deride them for ignorance of herself, the visible' 
mother, who holds them ever in her arms, until 
they have lived out their fretful lives, and while 
they sleep their subtle sleep. Or take Govern- 
ment. And we find that the simplest concep- 
tions, such as of law, right, duty, property, crime, 
in whatever system they were developed, were 
only begotten of the tumult of the people : and 
even when these symbols were born into the 
world, they had many rude storms to bear before 
their Levana came ; or if they grew to lay hold 
upon the nations, it was only as a blind Samson, 
pulling down old structures, indeed, iconoclasts 



68 DEVELOPMENT AND EEVELATION. 

indeed, but involving themselves in the common 
ruin. As to ancient philosophy, it was always 
of a semi-religious nature, devoted to specula- 
tions, with the pious aim of verifying the religious 
theory of the universe, or of explaining the phe- 
nomena of life on the received religious bases. 
These speculations aside, however, there were 
philosophers who approached the door through 
which, when bidden, revelations come. In the 
Greek philosophy, therefore, we perceive the re- 
ligious element of faith ; in the Egyptian, a re- 
cognition of the merit of good works ; while in 
the philosophy of the Hindoos, we find, though 
in a passive form, the conception of the law of 
love. But in all instances, the love, the faith, the 
good works, were associated with philosophi- 
cal thought, rather than with religious wor- 
ship. The fundamental x>rinciples of morality 
belonged to the schools rather than the temples. 
The philosophers did the thinking and the right 
living ; the priests offered sacrifices. The sym- 
bols of religion, therefore, were only latent prin- 
ciples, theories but not forces ; and their goings 
to and fro among the schools and sacred places 
were but as ' ' the blind groping of Homer's Cy- 
clopes about the walls of their cave ;" or if ever 
they were made free and operative by the union 
of philosophy and religion, it was only to go 
forth, under the mastery of blind impulses, to an 



DEVELOPMENT AND EEVELATION. 69 

unholy war, to bring thunderbolts to the mad 
Jupiter of superstition. 

But take the religions of those ancient peoples. 
There was a little religion in their philosophy, 
perhaps ; but there was no philosophy in their 
religion — neither any religion. Sometimes, in- 
deed, we discover a higher range of faith, touch- 
ing those ethical principles which interflow 
through all systems, and expressive of those 
hopes which are common to all human hearts. 
But there was no system of faith broad enough 
to embody the divine thought of good and evil, 
nor any deep enough to awaken those moral in- 
tuitions by which God is recognized. 

What, then, are the imperfections, or, rather, 
what are the impotencies of social development % 
In the first place, development without revela- 
tion makes specialists of men, and by demand- 
ing a one-sided perfection, by claiming the con- 
stant, trenchant service of a single faculty, 
dwarfs all other faculties, and makes the pro- 
duction of what Bacon calls "a full man" a so- 
cial impossibility. Development produces a so- 
ciety which, while it may be a grand unit in it- 
self is extremely imperfect and fragmentary to 
the individual. A developed society may be a 
beautiful structure, when viewed from the stand- 
point of history, but to the individual sacrificed 
without hope of compensation, it is only a cruel 
machine. Now, in the beginning, this assignment 



70 DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 

of specific tasks, and the cultivation of special 
gifts, was no doubt an inestimable benefit to 
mankind. The varied relations of a complex 
society demand a division of labor, a differen- 
tiation of social functions. In the childhood 
of the world, in the first stages of what Spencer 
is pleased to call the super-organic evolution, 
all the fine arts were united in a single master- 
work, just as all the functions of government 
were united in a single person. If that grand 
old temple on the Acropolis of Athens were re- 
stored indeed, and we were privileged to enter 
its marvellous propylseum, we should realize 
that sculpture was not yet a separate field of 
art. The wonderful figures displayed there, 
the processions of gods and goddesses, the 
groups of angels and heroes, were an essential 
part of the great superstructure itself. Sculp- 
ture was only an accessory of architecture. 
The beautiful was the servant of the useful. 
But by-and-by the figures were detached from 
the masonry, and sculpture began its history of 
glory as an independent art. So in commerce, 
all branches of business were originally carried 
on through a single agency. In the mechanic 
arts, the same manufacturer produced the weap- 
ons of war and the implements of husbandry. 
In government, the same headship united the 
functions of priest and legislator, of magistrate 
and king. But differentiation went on, until so- 



DEVELOPMENT AND KEVELATION. 71 

ciety became the complex organization that we 
glorify to-day. And this differentiation was a 
social blessing in its earlier application to the 
peoples. It was helpful and necessary. But 
differentiation is a feature of development which 
may reach a very doubtful kind of perfection. 
It was, no doubt, good for the individual, as well 
as society, to divide the labor of constructing and 
beautifying a great temple, but when this ten- 
dency is carried to the extreme of dividing the 
labor of making a wagon-wheel or a pin, all the 
wider possibilities of the man being absorbed in 
the energy required for this narrow routine of 
life, then, society is taking more from the indi- 
vidual than is possibly justifiable on the plea of 
social compensation. Society is a building as 
well as an organism ; and as such it should have 
proportion, unity, symmetry, repose ; it should 
be a refuge and a fortress for the individual, for 
the people. But our modern civilization is all 
chimneys and minarets. Its development is so 
pointed, indeed, so given up to immediate util- 
ity, or to superficial beauty, as to leave the im- 
portant considerations of shelter and security 
entirely out of the plan ; and, as a result, we 
find one element of society devoted to a passion- 
ate struggle for unabsorbed wealth, while anoth- 
er element, eager to avoid the least appearance 
of being practical, devote themselves to the 
attainment of an infeasible kind of learning, 



72 DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 

yclept culture. Indeed the old nomenclature is 
too broad to express the spheres to which men 
are now supposed to narrow themselves. It is 
not specific enough to say of one that he is a 
merchant, or a mechanic, or a husbandman ; or a 
physician, a lawyer, a teacher, a poet, a philoso- 
pher. The callings are broken into fragments, 
and men are narrowed to fragmentary lives to 
fit these callings ; and even if one enters upon 
the sacred calling of an instructor of youth, he 
must answer the inevitable question, u What is 
your specialty ?" As a miniature representation 
of the world of trade, you would not take the 
metropolitan dealer in a single line of goods, but 
rather the thriving, old-time country store. Here 
is not the fairest and best of any one article, per- 
haps ; not the latest style ; but here is the em- 
porium of things needful, and it provides for the 
whole man in all the round of life. It is inte- 
gral. And the true civilization will furnish an 
equipment just so full and complete for each 
individuality, looking to the equal good of all its 
constituent members, and withholding from the 
few whatever social luxuries may interfere with 
supplying the necessities of all. The highest 
civilization is an intellectual and spiritual com- 
munism. 

A modern philosopher institutes a comparison 
between the animal organism and society, rea- 
soning that just as decapitation is fatal to a bird, 



DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 73 

so it would endanger the members and the life- 
centres of a commercial society, to cut off the 
manufacturing district, or the mining district, 
or the grain-growing district. But does any re- 
presentative commercial community pay these 
so essential members in proportion to their ser- 
vice % Take the ill-paid specialists of the manu- 
facturing and mining districts of England ; these 
manufacturing pin-heads, those toiling in death 
haunted mines, these again devoted to more 
skilful labor ; imprisoned for ail their lives be- 
tween narrow city walls, or embowelled forever 
in the earth ; unschooled, disfranchised even of 
the citizenship of nature, almost unfed, what 
compensation can society offer these men, when 
they have sacrificed all that qualifies or capaci- 
tates them for the blessings of society \ Nay, 
they are but offerings to the social Juggernaut^ 
upon whose destructive car misers and mon- 
opolies ride as gods, and, were it not for the glad 
light of revelation that breaks in upon their 
dwarfed lives, prophesying the heavenly After- 
ward, they would be justified in renouncing civ- 
ilization, and going back into the jungles with 
the children of the earth. 

Specialism is, indeed, more hurtful, if not more 
degrading, than caste, Caste may leave the low- 
est individual master of himself and dispenser 
of his own time. Caste only wounds the pride 
of life ; specialism touches life itself. If we were 



74 DEVELOPMENT AND EEVELATION. 

in Burmah, to be sure, it would delight our van- 
ity to be up-stairs with the nobles, rather 
than down-stairs with the slaves, If in China, 
we should like our Sedan-chair carried by eight 
men, rather than two. if in Somo-Somo, we 
might covet the umbrella, which is the insignia 
of rank. If in Dahomey, we should like to 
swing in hammocks, as an evidence of our supe- 
riority. In Sumatra, we might be persuaded 
to adopt the aristocratic and royal custom of 
wearing long finger-nails. But all these distinc- 
tions affect only the outward man. And if we 
were bound to them by coercive co-operation, 
rather than by voluntary co-operation, there 
would still be comfort in the conscious free- 
dom of the soul. But the subordinate special- 
ists of a purely secular society, must give their 
whole individuality to the single task imposed 
upon them ; and such a society, failing of any 
ultimate, spiritual compensation, becomes an 
ugly, carnal Buddha, in which the individual 
is absorbed and lost, and to which the truest 
elements of a sacred manhood are given up in 
unrequited sacrifice. 

Social development without revelation is es- 
pecially impotent on the religious side, because 
of the religious and philosophical despair un- 
derlying developed systems of worship. The the- 
ology that grows is a sort of homoeopathic theo- 
logy. Every heathen pantheon seems to have 



DEVELOPMENT AND KEVELATION. 75 

been constructed on the theory that "like cures 
like." In India, where nature is prodigal of won- 
ders, the most imminent danger has ever been 
from wild beasts and storms ; and so the earliest 
religion of the people was an animal worship, 
accompanied with a deification of the forces 
of nature. The Greeks were threatened by rival 
peoples, led on by great heroes, and as a conse- 
quence, their gods were simply men magnified. 
In China, the immediate danger was anarchy, 
and so Confucius established a religion based 
upon civil law. And this pagan element of 
despair, as a motive, has sometimes displayed 
itself in the local development of Christianity. 

Take the character delineated by Victor Hugo, 
under the name of " Jean Yal jean," and you 
find this shadow of paganism wrought out in 
bold lines. This " Jean Val jean" had stolen a 
loaf of bread to feed his sister 1 s fatherless chil- 
dren. He committed the further crime of 
breaking a shop window to get the bread. 
After a summary trial, therefore, he was con- 
demned to the galleys, where he weathered the 
galling servitude of twenty years. The galley- 
prison made night in his soul, and left no stars. 
Breaking away from his bondage, by-and-by, 
he went forth a hater of humanity. But, as he 
wandered in the south of France, he came in con- 
tact with a gentle-hearted priest, who did him 
an unexpected act of kindness, and that deed of 



76 DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 

kindness penetrated the mist of malevolence 
that Lad shrouded his vision, touching his mor- 
al sensibilities into newness of life. And after a 
long and doubtful struggle, the moral nature, the 
conscience, the man, obtained the mastery. He 
became a peaceful citizen, and gained friends, 
riches and honor. But dark days awaited 
Jean Yaljean. There came news from one of 
the distant provinces of France that another man 
had been arrested, who so closely resembled the 
escaped convict as to be identified with him, 
and who was about to be adjudged the penalty 
of his crime. Jean Yaljean was in an upper 
room, having a titanic conflict with self. He 
had come to that place in life where two roads 
meet, the right, the wrong. You have walked 
in galleries of art and seen the master-works 
displayed there. Perhaps it is a historic scene 
that first attracts you, such as of Hannibal cross- 
ing the Alps, or of Washington crossing the 
Delaware, or of The Descent from the Cross. It 
may be a landscape view, such as The Depart- 
ure and Return, associating human incident 
with noble forms of scenery. It may be a repre- 
sentation of the Holy Family; the virgin moth- 
er, with that pensive mystery in her face ; the 
child- Christ, a radiance in shadow, like the twi- 
light of heaven, resting upon his brow. But if 
some artist divine, his pencil streaming with the 
sunlight of heavenly truth, could only disclose 



DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 77 

and materialize upon canvas those conflicts of a 
human soul, when, out in the cloud-land of 
doubt, one must feel his way, as it were, between 
the right and wrong, such a picture would be 
worthy to occupy the place of honor among all 
masters. Jean 1 Valjean had entered this cloud- 
land of doubt. He might do wrong, now, by 
leaving the innocent man to suffer in his stead ; 
and that meant to him riches, home, friends, hon- 
or, liberty. He might do right by bearing his 
own sin, and setting the prisoner free ; but, oh ! 
that meant to him the extremity of self-sacrifice ; 
the loss of friends, the loss of home, the loss of 
riches, the loss of honor, the loss of freedom ! 
He was alone in that upper room. The doors 
were shut in the streets. It was midnight. And 
yet, Jean Valjean had a visitor ; one that came 
not in by window or door, nor from all the sleep- 
ing world without, but one that laid hold upon the 
stricken man with all the force of a thousand gens 
cParmes, goaded him to the rough cross of du- 
ty, made him stand in his own stead, and let the 
prisoner be free. The invisible, omnipotent vis- 
itor was Conscience. But it was the Conscience 
of Revelation, not of Development. The con- 
science of development, the conscience of the 
mere citizen, was a cowardly conscience, making 
him fear punishment more than death. But the 
conscience, as pierced by the love-light of reve- 
lation, made him fear wrong-doing more than 



78 DEVELOPMENT AND EEVELATION. 

dishonor and death. The one conscience was 
absorbent, the other radiant. The one was self- 
centred, the other was world-centred. 

Again, the distinction between social evolu- 
tion and revelation appears in certain of the 
characteristics of modern peoples. Why do you 
prefer the Negro to the Chinaman? Why is 
the one a citizen, and the other a castaway ? 
Why is the one assimilated, and the other ostra- 
cised % Why is the one ushered into legislative 
halls, and the other ushered out of the country ? 
It is simply because you are convinced that the 
freedmen, with all their illiteracy, have been so 
baptized with Americanism and Christianity, 
that their impulses are loyal and right, and that 
whatever danger threatens the Republic, the 
whole emancipated race will follow the fortunes 
of the old flag. On the other hand, the finer 
sentiments of the nation blend with its coarser 
instincts against the Chinaman, not from depre- 
ciation of his present, but from despair of his 
future. It is not because he lacks development, 
but, primarily, because he stubbornly closes the 
gateway of his nature against Christian revela- 
tion. 

And it is in this matter of enlightened senti- 
ment that woman may be distinguished from 
man, to-day. All the fields of thought and en- 
terprise being open to man, it is natural that he 
should excel woman in some features of social 



DEVELOPMENT AJSTD EEVELATION. 79 

development. Man comes into Immediate con- 
tact with the difficulties of environment, and he 
must, therefore, be the pioneer of civilization, 
everywhere. It is made his mission to explore 
the universe of mind and matter, to bring forth 
out of the fastnesses of Nature, the hidden parts 
of Truth, and to construct the philosophies by 
which men and nations are guided. But follow, 
if you will, those under- currents of sentiment 
which determine history. Mark the ebb and 
flow of that tide upon which the nations are 
swept on to their destiny. Behold where is 
lighted the torch that kindles revolution ; for in 
the back-ground of history, throwing now a 
shadow upon mankind, and now a canopy of 
light, but ever beating upward on sure wing, as 
the lark rising to greet the sun, abideth the gen- 
tle, but mighty, influence of woman. The home 
is the lobby of the world. The home is the ora- 
cle of the nations. 

And why are woman's impulses so uniformly 
right ? Why are her sentiments so uniformly 
trustworthy ? It is simply because, all questions 
of social law, of relative intellectuality, of polit- 
ical philosophy, of narrow expediency, of dwarf- 
ing syllogism, — all these aside, she comes before 
the world bearing the simple oracles of God ; 
nay more, her heart of unquestioning faith is 
so joyfully open to the truth-light of Revelation, 
that her impulses are themselves become the 



80 DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 

oracles of God And, when the world shall at 
last recognize the mission of woman in the high- 
ways of civilization, as well as in the counsels of 
home, in the battle of the Titans as well as in the 
caves of Vulcan, when the intellect of man shall 
be at once mellowed by her charity and fired by 
her zeal, then the wheels of Christian civilization 
will move onward, as never before, "the living 
creature in the wheels," then Lexington and 
Waterloo and Runymede and Calvary will 
never, for one dark moment, seem to have been 
in vain, and then— 

***** " Shall all men's good 
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace 
Lie like a shaft of light across the land, 
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, 
Through all the circle of the golden year." 

Bnt the broadest superiority to be claimed for 
Society as aided by Revelation, is the fact that 
It defies that aggregate of adverse influences 
termed environment. All societies are condition- 
ed, and, in a degree, modified, by Nature, and, 
therefore, there is a sense of truth in the decla- 
ration that " history is the modification of man 
by Nature, and of Nature by man. M Antece- 
dent and environment will work their work. 
Food, climate, soil, the configuration of the 
earth and the proximity of the sea, are largely 
determinate factors in the growth of a commu- 
nity. But the current of Christian civilization 



DEVELOPMENT AND KEVELATION. 81 

flows from a higher fountain, through a deeper 
channel, than that of a purely developed society. 
" Turn to the rain-maps of America,' ' says Mr. 
Herbert Spencer; Well, turn to them. We find, 
as he has indicated, that Peru and Mexico are 
the comparatively rainless regions of the conti- 
nent, and furthermore, we discover in Peru and 
Mexico the relics of the only aboriginal civili- 
zation that would seem to have flourished here. 
And there is, doubtless, something of a causal 
relation between these two facts, showing, per- 
haps, that a dry clear atmosphere is a conserva- 
tor of social energy. But to be convinced how 
little Christian civilization is affected by this 
factor of environment, study the lines and cen- 
tres of American population, to-day, and it will 
be seen that these regions, supposed by philoso- 
phers to be most favorable to advanced civiliza- 
tion, have been almost utterly ignored ; and 
while the developed, aboriginal civilization was 
unable to propagate itself, unable even to pre- 
serve itself, Christian society has been estab- 
lished and has won its greatest achievements just 
where Nature has seemed most openly in rebel- 
lion. Christianity is not a prisoner to nature. It 
has so far risen above conditions, that, indepen- 
dently of them all, in every climate, under 
every hygeia, in every soil, it has preserved the 
same characteristics. It has demonstrated that 
the mighty forces of Nature, once propitiated as 

6 



82 DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 

evil spirits, are simply ministering angels. It 
has launched navies upon every sea, reared cit- 
ies beside every harbor, planted homes in every 
wilderness. It has made the air a mighty whis- 
pering-dome, through which every throb and 
nerve-token of the world's life is borne in to the 
centres of intelligence. It has gone further than 
this practical utilitarian stage of growth, and 
has sent forth an aristocracy of intellect, who are 
wooing Truth for Truth's own sake. All things 
are reduced to a science ; animals, plants, rocks ; 
the elements and the stars ; even the groups of 
passions and faculties that people the soul. The 
whole universe is being brought into the labora- 
tory. The crucible of science is the tribunal of 
truth. And, at last, Nature smiles upon her chil- 
dren, half in approval that they have found 
courage now to touch her garment-hem, half in 
derision that they imagine themselves to have 
discovered the hidden secrets of her great heart. 
But this is not all. This is but the material, 
perishing work of Christian civilization, and that 
alone were little indeed. For whether there be 
prophecies, though quivering on a shepherd's 
harp, or consecrated on a Saviour's lips, they 
shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall 
cease ; whether there be knowledge, though it 
may push its inquiries to the very origin of life, 
or reach out into those mysteries that lie in the 
fields of light around the throne of God, it shall 



DEVELOPMENT AND KEVELATION. 83 

vanish away. But Christianity has revealed to 
man a world within himself, bright and illimit- 
able, more enchanting than Daphne's grove, 
more healthful than Siloain's pool, more defiant 
of exploration than Arctic seas ; and it is the 
development of this inner world, the evolution 
of mind, the " super-organic evolution," indeed, 
which maketh a great society, a great people. It 
is the development of this revealed, regenerating 
world which has made our Indo-European fam 
ily of nations the great people they are ; a peo- 
ple who sweep triumphantly on, through every 
environment ; a people fearing their own hearts 
more than Mature, and fearing death only as the 
crucible of life ; a people who measure the tri- 
umphs of civilization and the living forces of 
society accordingly as they subserve the individ- 
ual, in his strivings after immortality ; a people 
whose religion is so firmly centred in a Divine 
personality that they can better comprehend 
Milton's Satan than Zeno's God ; a people fin- 
ally, who are so baptized with the love of life, 
because of the anticipatied joys of an eternal life 
of love, that they would shrink from the empty 
heaven of Buddha' s philosophy almost as pray- 
erfully as from the awful hell of Dante' s Dream. 
May we not see, then, the conclusive distinc- 
tion between development and revelation ? De- 
velopment subserves universals ; revelation is 
for the individual. Development preserves the 



84 DEVELOPMENT AND PvEV ELATION. 

strong, by the law of force, of struggle ; revela- 
tion is committed to the preservation of the 
weak, through the law of grace. Development 
works the survival of the fit, the expedient ; rev- 
elation works the survival of the true, the godly. 

Aristotle imagines a man grown to full maturi- 
ty in some dark distance, all outward nature an 
unknown realm, and then suddenly brought to 
the surface of the earth to behold the sun, and 
all this wonder- striking world. But let us sup- 
pose this child-man to have come forth from his 
hiding-place when the earth was enveloped in 
cloud; darkness and storm, everywhere. By-and- 
by, however, the sun begins to claim his domin- 
ion. Here is a rift in the cloud, and there, and 
yonder, the sunbeams gliding through ; and far 
away some proud mountain summit, piercing the 
veil, crowns itself with noonday. And the 
child-man says: " There are as many suns as 
there are shafts of light" ! That is just what 
the religion of development says, in the spiritu- 
al realm, bringing forth its fragmentary systems, 
its lords many and gods many. A tide of wind, 
a breath of God, and all the clouds are gone ; 
whereupon the child-man discovers that these 
broken lights are but emanations of the one cen- 
tral orb. That is the religion of Revelation. 

In Wallace's marvellous story of "Ben-Hur," 
a " tale of the Christ," indeed, three men, moved 
by a common impulse, are grouped together on 



DEVELOPMENT AND KEVELATION". 85 

the sands of Arabia. Each one represents the 
highest civilization in his own ]and. Belthaser 
comes from Egypt, the nursery of Science, and 
his highest religions conception is of the merit 
of good works. Gaspar comes from Greece, the 
cradle of Literature, and his religions develop- 
ment has produced something of the element of 
faith. MelcMor is from India, the mother of re- 
ligions, and his heart has approached the law of 
love. Bnt they are all waiting, now, for God to 
come down and verify and crown his work. 
They have seen the Star over Bethlehem, and 
they have heard, each in his own far land, the 
whisperings of angels, bidding them go and wor- 
ship One who is to be at once the embodiment 
of all truth and the Saviour of all truth-seekers. 
Go with them and look upon the infant Jesus. 
We know him now as the central figure of his- 
tory. But follow the giant' s causeway of his life, 
from the beginning. Now we find him in the 
out-of-doors guest-bed, at Bethlehem, now in the 
lowly household of Nazareth, now on troubled 
Galilee, now in Pilate's hall, now on the cross. 
A deep-natured man he was, a man of passions 
and of sorrows, mightily human, as well as 
mightily divine. It is but the little stream, 
bearing no burdens, which has the imperturbed 
waters. The ocean bears the laden ships, and 
the ocean has the tides and storms. But, like the 



88 DEVELOPMENT A?s T D KEY ELATION. 

sea again, the Christ was pure and right, always, 
by the active forces of His own life ; 

"Through, all that tract of years, 
Wearing the white flower of blameless life, 
Before a thousand peering littlenesses, 
In that tierce light which beats upon a throne 
And blackens every blot." 

And beyond this human perfectness there yet 
lies a background of subtle, divine mystery, be- 
fore which St. Paul's theology seems almost as 
helpless as Milton' s poetry, and he can only ex- 
claim, while the light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God pierces the translucent veil of His 
divinity : " Great is the mystery of Godliness." 

Who can solve the mystery of this wondrous 
personality \ Try Him. Bring hither the sound- 
ing-lines of philosophy. Test Him, now, by 
the crucibles of Science. Measure Him by the 
standards of history. Explain Him by the 
laws of social evolution. Try environment. 
That, forsooth ! must explain Him. No, environ- 
ment will not do ; for in Ephesus, yonder, they 
are offering human sacrifices before the hideous 
image of Diana ; in Home, farther on, they are 
so absorbed in the science of government and 
the philosophy of pleasure, that they have never 
dreamed of the law of love, or of righteousness. 
And eastward, there in India, the dream-land of 
religion, they are dreaming still, and amid vain, 
wild prayers they are looking up into the in- 



DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 87 

communicable skies and longing for their joyless 
heaven of annihilation Or return to Judea it- 
self, and here in the foreground are the Scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites, in the background 
the people who kill the prophets and stone those 
who are sent unto them. Narrowing the scene 
still toward its central figure, we see a rude car- 
penter, his Galilean home isolated from the social 
and intellectual world, and this in a subject-land, 
a land of arid hills, encircled by the Sahara and 
the sea. And yet, somehow, in this environment 
of pleasure and despair, the Christ appears, the 
ideal of humanity and the mystery of godliness ; 
one whom neither history, science nor philosophy 
can explain, though He is to-day the thought- 
object of them all. But while this wonderful na- 
ture is hidden from the view of earthly wisdom, 
He may be spiritually discerned as the high- 
est Revelation, given of God as the crown of 
the highest development. He is the perfect 
individual, tlie ultimate personality, given first 
for the individual, and afterward for that social 
aggregate of individuals, the people. And 
Christian civilization is simply the outgoing of 
Christ as the leaven of the world's life ; the 
blossoming of the flower-root of Sharon in all 
philosophies, all literatures, all governments, 
all homes, all hearts. And when this process 
of world-leavening is complete, the mountain of 
the Lord's house shall be established in the top 



88 DEVELOPMENT AND REVELATION. 

of the mountains, and from that lofty place the 
new earth, looking backward, all cloud-fields 
vanished away, shall see that no event or 
thought in all the mighty universe of God had 
been in vain ; but, revolution the crucible of 
law, science the corrective of superstition, and 
nature the school of the world's childhood, all 
things swept onward, as it pleased Him who was 
invisible, toward the unity of the ages in the 
bonds of Truth. 



Whittier. 



THY words the heralds are of freedom, 
Bold shafts that pierce the pride of wrong : 
The mothers of the ransomed people 

Have hushed their infants with thy song. 

Thy life flows on, a stately river 
Of mirrored deeds, that sweetly tell 

The rugged way of holy living, 
The mystery of. doing well. 

In fields of light, beyond the shadow, 

Where, nevermore these earth-storms blow, 

The sheltering wings of love eternal 
Shall keep the lost thou lovest so. 

There, rest, exceeding far Nirvana, 

Remaineth, and the living breath 
Of God, the Comforter, shall gladden 

The purlieus of the realm of death. 

But thou hast, here, yearning pilgrim, 
A thousand friendships warm as May, 

And myriad hands, by heart-fires quickened, 
Are clasping thine, to bid thee stay. 

Stay thou with us till latest evening, 
With heavenly song to thrill us yet, 

While waits thee, at the break of morning, 
A fadeless crown, with jewels set. 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED, 

A SERMON. 

' ' FOR I DETERMINED NOT TO KNOW ANYTHING AMONG YOU r 

save Jesus Christ, and him crucified." — 1 Cor. ii. 2. 

0~N a table of rock two hundred feet above 
the sea, and overshadowed by her mountain 
of defence, the Acrocorinthus ; looking timidly 
eastward, over the Saronic gulf, upon the shores 
of iEgina, her ancient enemy ; looking trium- 
phantly westward, over the Corinthian gulf, 
upon the abodes of subjects and allies ; looking 
very proudly every way — there stood the queenly 
city of Corinth. That earlier Corinth was per- 
haps the most populous city of the Grecian 
world ; and while the 7 genius of her people was 
rather commercial than military, leaving the 
struggle for leadership to the more intellectual 
Athens and the more robust Sparta, yet Corinth 
had her points of ascendency, as well as they. 
Corinth was the commercial metropolis ; the 
patron of music ; the perfector of the art of 

(90) 



PAUL THE SUSTGLE-HEAKTED. 91 

building, whether of ships or of palaces ; the 
golden gate through which painting was ush- 
ered into Greece ; the inventor of the triremis, 
that famous type of war-vessel which was so 
long the undisputed empress of the seas ; the 
supposed contriver of the Corinthian column, 
destined to constitute an order of architecture 
for all time. Corinth was the nursery of artists 
like Cleanthes, of poets like Eumelus, and of rul- 
ers like Periander. Corinth was renowned, too, 
for the exceptionally prosperous colonies she 
established, even Syracuse looking up to her, 
with all deference, as the mother-city. And 
when the power of Athens and of Sparta had 
succumbed to the waste of civil war and the cor- 
ruption of foreign gold, Corinth acquired the 
headship of Greece, and became the evening 
star of Greek nationality. 

But, about one hundred and fifty years before 
the birth of our Saviour, this old city was 
utterly destroyed, and the site of its ancient 
splendor exhibited only a desolate ruin, until, 
a century afterward, it was rebuilt by Julius 
Csesar, and made the capital of the Roman prov- 
ince of Achaia. It was in this new city, more 
magnificent, if less important, than the genuine 
Greek city, that Paul established a Christian 
Church. 

It has been said that between the new Corinth 
and the old, the identity of place was the only 



92 PAUL THE SIKGLE-HEAKTED. 

bond of connection. But there was certainly 
another bond. The old city had produced the 
dithyrambus, the famous hymn to Bacchus, and 
prototype of all bacchanalian songs ; and the new 
city, although an alien people, immediately re- 
sumed the voluptuous hymn, and all t be practi- 
cal voluptuousness of their renowned step-fa- 
thers. A truly cosmopolitan city, this later Cor- 
inth embraced in her inconstant population all 
classes, out of all nations. Roman noblemen 
were there, and Jewish merchants, and Alexan- 
drian philosophers, and Germanic soldiers, and 
Phenician sailors, and Greek artisans and slaves ; 
noblemen, merchants, philosophers, soldiers, sail- 
ors, artisans and slaves from all parts of the 
known world : and, whatever the manifold tem- 
peraments and aims of these domiciled stran- 
gers, the heart-gods, Gain and Pleasure, divided 
and absorbed the attention of them all. Corinth 
was a communism of wickedness. Honesty and 
virtue were cultivated only to be despised. All 
phases of crime went along with her general 
merchandise. And so great, indeed, was the de- 
pravity of this Grseco-Roman city, that when 
Paul wished to depict the corruptions of the 
heathen world, in his letter to the Christians at 
Rome, he was neither forced to draw from his- 
tory, nor to group the various practices and 
teachings to be observed in the different centres 
of population. He had only to abide in Corinth, 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEAKTED. 93 

only to know Corinth, and then to transmit a 
faithful word-painting of the social and religions 
life of that profligate city. He therefore simply 
expressed his local observation of the manners 
of this pagan microcosm in the terms of a sweep- 
ing arraignment of the whole pagan world, and 
declared that they ''changed the glory of the in- 
corruptible God, for the likeness of an image of 
corruptible man ; . * . * * * ■ * being filled 
with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetous- 
ness, maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, strife, 
deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters 
of God, insolent, haughty ; boastful, inventors of 
evil things, disobedient to parents, without un- 
derstanding, covenant-breakers, without natural 
affection, unmerciful : who, knowing the ordi- 
nance of God, that they which practice such 
things are worthy of death, not only do the 
same, but also consent with them that practice 
them." That is, no doubt, a very correct inven- 
tory of the sins of Corinth, for Corinth was the 
Vanity Fair of an extremely vain age, at once a 
civilized Gomorrah and a pagan Paris. 

In such a city as that, and amid the manifold 
temptations peculiar to such an environment, 
Paul had founded a Christian society, abiding 
with them, a living epistle, for two full years, 
during which time he applied himself to the 
lowly calling of a tent-maker, that no one should 
ever be able to confound him with the mammon- 



94 PAUL THE SLN T GEE-HEAKTED. 

worshiping multitude. But while he tarried at 
Ephesus, apostolic messengers brought a letter 
of serious inquiry from Corinth, which, supple- 
mented as it was by the confidential testimony 
of the messengers themselves, revealed a very 
painful condition of affairs in the Corinthian 
church, It transpired that false religion and 
naked worldliness had joined hands, threatening 
the very existence of the infant church, and 
those babes in Christ were subjected to all the 
temptations the cunning malice of Satan could 
invent. Somebody had come along and cor- 
rupted their simple tastes with an exquisite, but 
innutritions, worldly philosophy. Another had 
preached about circumcision and the ordinances, 
forgetful of faith. Schism^ had broken in upon 
them, so that some were for Paul, because his 
letters were weighty, some were for Apollos, be- 
cause his bodily presence and his speech were 
eloquent, and others were for Peter, because he 
was said to be the authorized chief of the apos- 
tles. Even the name of Christ had been degra- 
ded to the leadership of a faction ! And then, 
withal, that tumultuous paganism of Corinth 
was forever beating in upon them, and, through 
all motives of self-interest, and all the propensi- 
ties of the natural heart when habituated to sin, 
appealing for compromise. Ah, what comprom- 
ise there was with the enticing world on the part 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEAKTED. 95 

of those poor, shepherdless, beleaguered Corin- 
thians ! 

And so the sorrowing Panl stood up at the 
right hand of Sosthenes, his righteons indigna- 
tion only surpassed by his yearning love, and, 
fast as Sosthenes could write, I think, his words 
sprang forth from the great deep of a heart in- 
spired by the Spirit of God. Commissioned of 
Christ, he had a great many things to say to 
them; about that glorious liberty which eases 
the yoke of the Gospel, about the sanctity of the 
home, about faith as the essence of the right- 
eousness of God, about love as the fulfilling of the 
law, about the blessed-mystery of the resurrec- 
tion. But, at the very threshold, he feels that 
he must justify himself as having been a true 
ambassador of Christ, in his pastoral sojourn 
among them ; and he can only interpose a loving 
salutation, all love to them, all tribute to Christ, 
with one apostolic sword-thrust at their party 
strife and their idolized wisdom, and then he 
opens his heart in that glorious avowal : "I de- 
termined not to know anything among you, 
save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I came to 
you in singleness of heart. I did not preach that 
wisdom of the natural world which becomes 
foolishness in the spiritual realm. I did not 
magnify good works over the righteousness 
of faith in Christ. I protest that I no more 
preached myself than I preached Apollos, or 



96 PADL THE SINGLE-HEAKTED, 

Peter. I came to yon in weakness, and in fear, 
and in much trembling, an empty vessel, wait- 
ing at the fountains of heavenly wisdom ; so that 
when I should preach to you my words might 
be in demonstration of the spirit and of power. 
I gave you, moreover, no example of comprom- 
ise with the world. I magnified Christ, and Him 
only ; I lived Christ, and Him only ; I preached 
Christ, and Him only ; for I determined not to 
know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, 
and Him crucified." 

Now let the example of Paul the single- 
hearted be lifted up over our altars, to-day, in 
all its towering simplicity, and let us discern if 
there is any testimony against us in this ideal 
prototype of the G-ospel ministry. 

The example of Paul the Single-hearted cer- 
tainly rebukes all digressions of worldly wis- 
dom from the preaching of Christ as the one 
theme of the Gospel, unless, indeed, those very 
digressions tend, ultimately and surely, to 
make Christ still more real and present to the 
popular mind, and to enforce more perfectly 
His immediate claim on human hearts. The 
preaching of to-day is careful and troubled 
about many things, perplexing the Church and 
the world with problems quite foreign to the 
realm of the G-ospel ; and it needs to labor up to 
the Cross, like Bunyan's pilgrim, and lose its 
burden of anxiety in the empty tomb of Christ. 



PAUL THE SLTSTGLE-HEAKTED. 97 

Is it not true % Is there not too much vain 
hounding of the ravenous wolves, and too little 
care, relatively, for the wandering sheep \ Is there 
not too much fretfulness about evil-doers, and 
too little praise and appreciation of them that 
do well % Yes, qualifiedly at least, and in mul- 
tiplied instances, it is true. And there are min- 
isters of this Gospel of the Kingdom of God 
who seem to think that, before they come to the 
great theme, the divine message, they must an- 
nihilate atheism and agnosticism, disprove the 
false philosophies, and project the laws of the 
natural world into the domain of the spiritual, 
to give reality and solidity to the spiritual, until 
at last they wander so far away from the throne 
and the royal palace, and become so entirely lost 
in the wilderness of their own vain questionings, 
that they are like the fabulous Cassam in the cave 
of the forty robbers ; they knew the key of faith 
very well when it opened the door to the treasury- 
house of wisdom, but forgetful of it so long in their 
attention to the riches of philosophy, they have 
lost that magic key, and they can neither go out 
themselves, nor release their people, from the 
darkness of doubt with which they are envel- 
oped. If the way to the real matter of preach- 
ing were indeed so long and labyrinthine, Paul 
must certainly have been a very long time in 
coming at it. For every city in Paul's day, 
whether Greek, Latin or Hebrew, was rent with 

7 



98 PAUL THE SEN T GLE-HEAKTED. 

strife about the philosophies and about the 
creeds. But Paul had tried controversy a little, 
in the market-place at Athens, when encoun- 
tered by the Epicureans and Stoics, and the re- 
sult was altogether unsatisfactory to the single- 
hearted apostle. He concluded, therefore, that 
he would not dispute about mere philosophy 
while the people were hungering for a Gospel, 
and yet so dead in trespasses and in sins as not to 
know for what they were yearning. And going 
straight from Athens to Corinth, he came unto 
the latter city with a method of preaching still 
more exclusive as to its subject-matter, his de- 
voted heart firmly set against everything irrele- 
vant to the direct message of the G-ospel, refus- 
ing the windows of his soul to every ray of 
light, however brilliant, which did not emanate 
from the Sun of Righteousness, so fortified 
with simplicity, indeed, as not to know any- 
thing among them, save Jesus Christ, and Him 
crucified. 

" Nothing else, Paul ?" we can fancy those 
sprightly Corinthians saying. " No cosmic philo- 
sophy, Paul \ No interpretation of Plato ? No 
proclamation of saving ordinances % No cham- 
pionship of the rabbinical school of Hillel, nor 
yet of Shammai % No popular treatment of local 
themes, suggested by the gossip which came to 
the house of Aquila and Priscilla % No other 
theme, Paul, save the preaehing of that obscure 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEAKTED. 99 

Galilean who died in the fashion of a criminal 
on the shameful cross V ' 

Yes ; one thing more. u And Him crucified ! 
Christ, and Him crucified, we preach, unto the 
Jews a stumbling-block, albeit, and unto the 
Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which are 
called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power 
of God, and the wisdom of God. For I deter- 
mined not to know anything among you, save 
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." And thus, by 
a circumlocution eloquent as it is single-hearted, 
he lingers, always, upon the one great theme. 

And yet this single-heartedness does not by any 
means preclude diversity of treatment in the 
unfolding of the Gospel, nor does it preclude 
genuine philosophy, nor any of the crucibles of 
truth. The truth, in all things, always, every- 
where, is the truth of God, and Christianity is 
its fullest embodiment and revelation. And if 
it is a fact, corresponding to the Grecian fable, 
that error, in the disguise of truth, has been 
juggled into the world by the powers of dark- 
ness, purposely to distract and disappoint the 
truth-seeking multitudes, there is no power 
to expose and defeat the fraud, save that many- 
colored wisdom of God revealed in Christ, who 
is, indeed, the integral truth, absorbing and em- 
bodying all fractional, fragmentary truths what- 
soever. 

You have observed the different conceptions and 



100 PAUL THE SI^GLE-HEAKTED. 

representations of the face of the infant Christ. 
See how manifold they are, as they come from dif- 
ferent ages, different schools, different masters ! 
Here is a painting from the scholastic age which 
gives Him a face vicariously sad, as if the shadow 
of G-ethsemane and the weight of the Cross were 
already upon Him. Another, from a Dutch 
master of long ago, represents Him wearing a 
look of wondrous solicitude, as if already the 
impotent multitudes were before Him, waiting to 
be made whole. And here is a Flemish ideal of 
the infant Saviour, a supernatural halo upon his 
brow, as if He were already glorified. But there 
is one, finally, which is wonderfully human, re- 
presenting Jesus as a mere babe, like your own 
child at home, down here in this real world, no 
effort at transfiguring or glorifying ; suggesting, 
rather, that in his humiliation for us, he would 
live the whole ascending scale of human life, 
until he should transcend it all, the unconscious 
babe becoming the dutiful son, the apt pupil, 
the gentle master, the omnipotent Saviour. 

But all these paintings, beloved Christians, 
represented the same Jesus, and all these artists 
accepted him as a personal Saviour. And so 
the speaking art, as well as the shaping art, 
may preach a diversified Gospel. But we should 
not forget that, while there are many gifts, there 
is but one calling. " The Gospel,' ' as one has fine- 
ly said, ' ' is the true enunciation of God in Christ.' ' 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED. 101 

" I preach ; I preach only" said a living minister 
of the Word, when solicited to engage in a 
secular enterprise. Bnt the single-hearted Paul 
affords us an ideal which regards the subject-mat- 
ter, as well as the business of preaching, under 
the yet nobler motto : " I preach Christ ; 1 preach 
Christ only." And, as every conception of 
the look of the infant Jesus is tributary, in 
the artist's mind, to the one conception of him 
as the world's Saviour, as every sunbeam, 
whether in diversifying prism, or flowering 
field, or shimmering sea, projected backward 
on its line of descent, falls unerringly into the 
one fountain of light, so all lines of thought and 
of sentiment, bounded by the grand circumfer- 
ence of Gospel preaching, should converge ro 
the one theme, even Jesus, ' c who, of God, is 
made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and 
sanctification, and redemption." 

The example of Paul the single-hearted re- 
bukes that multiplicity of occupations, and all 
worldly preoccupation, which contravenes or 
abridges the success of the preacher in his own 
holy calling. The preaching of the Gospel is 
occupation enough for the whole heart, all the 
days of a man's life ; and any measure of success 
in the Gospel ministry is absolutely conditional 
upon that entire consecration which made Paul, 
in his own language, ' ' the slave of the Lord 
Jesus Christ," 



102 PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED. 

Let us recall Justin McCarthy's critical esti- 
mate of the work of Charles Kingsley: — "He 
did a great many things very cleverly. Perhaps 
if he had done less, he might have done better. 
Human capacity is limited. It is not given to 
mortal to be at once a great preacher, a great 
philosopher, a great scholar, a great poet, a 
great historian, a great novelist and an in- 
defatigable country parson. Charles Kingsley 
never seemed to have made up his mind for 
which of these callings to go in especially ; 
and being, with all his versatility, not at all 
many-sided, but strictly one-sided, and almost 
one-idead, the result was that, while touch- 
ing success in many points, he absolutely mas- 
tered it in none." 

That reflects the sentiment of the present 
times. We readily associate with these the 
words of Shakspeare, which he makes John of 
Lancaster say to the Archbishop of York : 

" How deep you were within the books of God! 
To us, the speaker in his parliament ; 
To us, th' imagined voice of God himself; 
The very opener and intelligencer 
Between the grace, the sanctities of heaven, 
And our dull workings. ***** 
My Lord of York, it better show'd with you, 

******** 
Than now to see you here an iron man, 
Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum, 
Turning the word to sword, and life to death." 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEAKTED. 103 

These criticisms afford us glimpses of the 
world's sentiment against all secularizing of the 
sacred office. If Charles Kingsley had been a 
lawyer, in the first instance, and the Archbishop 
a soldier, the multiplying of other callings into 
their chosen one would have been attributed, we 
may confidently assume, to a praiseworthy facil- 
ity of genius. But every profession and craft, 
the representatives of every shade of belief, are 
united in viewing the Gfospel ministry as a sin- 
gle-hearted calling, and as deserving, and de- 
manding, the entire consecration of every fa- 
culty of an integral manhood to the grand work 
of preaching Christ, and Him crucified. 

The preacher's commission, however, can not 
be said to prohibit the exercise of his multiplied 
talents in the various fields of human activity. 
He is all things to all men. His mission is not 
circumscribed by cant, or bigotry, or vanity. It 
is the most comprehensive of all professions. 
There is hardly a single line of affairs, but falls 
within, or forms a tangent to, the grand circum- 
ference of the ministry of the Gospel. u It is 
not," as Hoppin has said, " exactly the work of 
the scholar, or the philosopher, or the historian, 
or the scientist, or the advocate, or the soldier, or 
the business man, or the statesman, though it par- 
takes of all these." But whatever door opens 
to the true minister of the word, whatever field 
he enters, he will take Christ with him, Christ 



104 PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED, 

crucified, and preach Him there. The preacher, 
as philosopher, who makes Christ the soul of 
his system, the preacher, as scientist, who makes 
Christ the motive of his research, the preacher, 
as author, who makes Christ the ultimate aim 
of his literary conceptions and aspirations, the 
preacher who interprets his commission in that 
broad way is genuinely obedient to the command 
of Christ, and is in the royal path trodden by 
many of the grandest heroes and reformers 
of Christian history. Christ is with the true 
preacher, in all things, everywhere, and is 
preached everywhere, not obtrusively, yet 
boldly. 

fellow-ambassadors, let us put our Christ 
forward in all things ! Let us take him into that 
close companionship which will make our hearts 
burn within us, and kindle all our handiwork 
with G-ospel fire ! Let us gladly persevere in 
that foolishness of preaching, which, in a mys- 
tery, is made the wisdom of God. 

You may remember that fictitious personage, 
described by Charles Dickens, who was set upon 
writing a memorial to parliament, but who, by a 
singular monomania, always got into it some re- 
ference to the head of king Charles I. I almost 
think, sometimes, that it would be a blessed 
thing if we preachers were seized with a spiritual 
monomania, so that we should unconsciously 
put our crucified Saviour into all the intercourse 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED. 105 

and achievements of life ; and that all secular 
employments whatsoever, with their accompany- 
ing emoluments and honors, might appear to our 
consecrated hearts as only relative and second- 
ary, the primary, absolute, substantial honor 
being that we are allowed of God to be put in 
trust with the Gospel. 

The example of Paul the single-hearted, 
finally ', rebukes everything like false dignity 
in the style of Christian preaching, and in 
methods of Christian benevolence and evangel- 
ization. 

"I brought myself under bondage to all,'* 
said Paul the single-hearted. "And to the Jews 
I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews ; to 
them that are under the law, as under the law, 
not being myself under the law, that I might 
gain them that are under the law ; to them that 
are without law, as without law — not being 
without law to God, but under law to Christ 
— that I might gain them that are without 
law. To the weak I became weak, that I might 
gain the weak ; I am become all things to all 
men, that I may by all means save some. And 
I do all things for the Gospel's sake." * * * 
"..Even unto this present hour," he exclaims 
again, "we both hunger, and thirst, and are na- 
ked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwell- 
ing-place, and we toil, working with our own 
hands ; being reviled, we bless ; being perse- 



106 PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED. 

cuted, we endure ; being defamed, we entreat ; 
we are made as the refuse of the world, the off- 
scouring of all things, even until now." 

But, while Paul had evidently never conceived 
of what the world sometimes calls "ministerial 
dignity," this self-denial did not proceed from 
a humility of the boastful, sentimental type. 
Paul had all the political pride of a Roman citi- 
zen, and all the just, spiritual pride of one who 
felt that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ by 
the will of God. He subjected that pride for the 
Gospel's sake, magnifying his office, and yet ad- 
justing himself to every secular and religious 
environment, that he might outflank the preju- 
dices of men and compel their attention to 
Christ, and Him crucified. In this spirit, and 
with a style and method inspired by it, we find 
Paul going up and down all the paths of the 
Roman world, having within him like a flame of 
fire, and about him like a robe of light, the sim- 
ple dignity of a grand purpose. And so when 
Paul would win Timothy, the pupil of the 
Law, or Lydia, the purple-seller, or Dionysius 
the Areopagite, or Stephanus, the slave, he 
did not wait for an evangelist. He went 
straight to the market-place, or the synagogue, 
or the theatre, or the workshop, or the home, 
personally urging the claims of Christ upon 
all hearts. When the Philippian prison-gates 
closed upon him, he did not send for a pray- 



PAUL THE SLNGLE-HEARTED. 107 

ing-band. He lifted up his own voice unto 
God, and the angels came down. When he 
wanted to gain the fiery multitudes of Jerusalem, 
or the cynical populace of Athens, or the pagan 
hordes of G-alatia, he did not organize a salva- 
tion army. He was all things to all men, all me- 
thods to all temperaments ; he was bishop, 
presbyter, pastor, evangelist, colporteur ; rector 
and curate ; a conference president and local 
preacher ; teacher, brother and servant. He was 
all things, and did all things, which might con- 
tribute in any way to the supreme purpose of 
winning men to Christ. 

O that we might have abundantly more of the 
zeal, abundantly more of the simplicity, abun- 
dantly more of the humility, of Paul the single- 
hearted ! 

Martin Luther said to one of the pastors of his 
day : "When you are about to preach, speak to 
God, and say, ' My Lord God, I wish to 
preach to Thine honor, to speak of Thee, to 
praise Thee, to glorify Thy name.' " And 
Thomas Chalmers manifested that same spirit. 
When agonizing over the question whether he 
should leave Kilmany for Glasgow, he exclaim- 
ed : "0 God, keep me from vanity!" That 
ejaculatory prayer was answered, and Chalmers 
in Glasgow reminds us of Savonarola in Flor- 
ence, Ambrose in Milan, and Paul in Corinth. 

And there are men, to-day, perchance, whom a 



108 PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED. 

vain cburchliness may call mere charlatans, illit- 
erate, crude, lowly men ; and yet these single- 
hearted charlatans shall enter the kingdom of 
God before us ail, if we suffer our vanity to ob- 
struct our usefulness in the work of evangelizing 
the world. Out with the cunning heart- thief 
that steals the name of dignity to serve our van- 
ity in ! On with the robes of a consecrated hu- 
mility ! Away to the highways and hedges with 
that universal call to the love-feast of the Gos- 
pel ! Go ye out — out of that frigid temple, out 
of that sombre pulpit, out of that slothful pew, 
out of that word-heavy theology, out of that vain 
formalism — go ye out into all the world, and 
preach to all the people Christ, and Him cruci- 
fied. 

" He preach eth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small ; 
For the dear God, who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 

And Paul's manner of departure from the 
world, the stately cheerfulness of his farewell, 
was the worthy consummation of his heroic 
character. Howbeit, Paul as seen by the Roman 
world was a very different personage from Paul 
as spiritually discerned by Christian faith and 
history. The Roman world saw him only as a 
homeless, travel-worn, invalid Jew, who devoted 
great talents and learning to preaching about 
mere names, and about that Galilean Jesus 3 



PAUL THE SINGLE-HEARTED. 109 

whom Pilate had capitally punished in the reign 
of Tiberius. A rather troublesome fellow this 
Paulns was, thought the Romans, being often 
brought into their proconsular courts, on a 
charge of sedition, and for having another king, 
instead of Csesar. And finally the Roman world 
concluded to be rid of this despiser of their 
gods, inasmuch as they had an emperor, now, 
who could take life with a facility so wonderful, 
and without any sense of its sacredness. There 
was a form of trial, therefore ; there was a 
stir among the guards ; there was a march of 
soldiery ; there was a flourish of trumpets, the 
flash of a sword ; and the Paul the Romans could 
see was no more. 

But to Christianity there is a Paul whom the 
Roman world could not comprehend. He is just 
entering the last shadow of the valley of humil- 
iation, when he turns to say farewell, not re- 
garding, for the briefest moment, the outward 
preparations for his death. His soul is already 
contemplating the life invisible. For him to live 
had been Christ, and for him to die is going to 
be gain. The perils, the buffettings, the scourg- 
ings, the false imprisonments, they are all 
ended. " Farewell, Agrippa, Gallio, Csesar, my 
appeal is now to the tribunal of the universe ! 
Farewell, Timothy, I am ready ! I have fought 
the good fight, not always gaining an immediate 
victory, but always fighting under the right ban- 



110 PAUL THE SINGLE-HEAKTED. 

ner, which is the way of ultimate and eternal 
victory. I have finished the course, I have kept 
the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a 
crown of righteousness." 

And, then, over Paul the single-hearted, 
though he regarded it not, that sword-flash over 
there by the great pyramid, just outside the tu- 
mult of the careless city, threw a shadow, the 
universal shadow. Beneath that shadow the 
worn body sank to rest. Out of that shadow, 
evermore, the great soul passed to the great 
reward. 



Song of the Pilgrim 



THE world is sad, the world is gay, 
And harvest suns may smile or weep. 
December laughs at mournful May/ 
In fields of tares the reapers reap. 

The soul-life, friend, pervadeth all, 
And nature's moods but image thee. 

All things for good shall thee befall, 
If Christ, the heart-king, thine may be. 



(Ill) 



THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLOWERS, 



[An Address before the D. B. P. Mott Post, G. A. R., of Free- 
port, L. I., May 30, 1885.] 

FOE. some worthy tribute to the fallen de- 
fenders of the American Union we have 
appealed from Art to Nature, from the handi- 
work of man to the handiwork of God, and the 
flowers are Nature's answering tribute to a 
nation's dutiful children. Shall any possible 
word-tribute from the lips of man be thought 
worthy of companionship with the chaste and 
holy tribute of the flowers? And even the 
flowers themselves, beautiful as they are with 
the maternal blush of Spring, and fragrant as 
they are with the breath of purity and of love, 
those all-pervading attributes of God ; what are 
the flowers themselves, comrades of the slain, 
but poor, inadequate symbols of a sacred mem- 
ory, wherein our sorrow that these heroes were 
called to die, holds weird companionship with 
our gratitude that they were willing to die ? 
Yes, we may cherish a deeper symbolism of the 

(112) 



i 



THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLOWERS. 113 

flowers, perhaps, and discern in them our own 
assurance of the righteousness of the cause for 
which these heroes contended, and the everlast- 
ing fame they won in dying for their country. 
How much better, then, are the flowers than 
battle-monuments! A work of art can be the 
tribute of only one age, decaying through all 
seasons, an emblem of forgetfulness. The flow- 
ers typify those regenerations which multiply 
into immortality. And the tribute of the flow- 
ers is all the more significant because they sug- 
gest associations of peace. War is a part of 
the brawny husbandry of civilization ; peace is 
the golden harvest. War is the fiery crucible 
of society ; peace is the purged gold. However 
often Liberty may have to put on a crown of 
thorns, and lift the sword of revolution, her 
crown-jewels are the arts of peace, and even 
her war plumage displays the perennial olive- 
branch. 

But we shall not overreach this beautiful sym- 
bolism, comrades of the slain, if we call forth 
our admiration, or even our patriotism, to the' in- 
terpretation of the language of the flowers. For 
these fallen heroes deserve every offered tribute, 
meaningful as the hearts of comrades can 
make the offering. They were not the blind 
devotees of any effete system, these lost ones of 
ours. They were not the goaded subjects of a 
king. They were neither the instruments of 
8 



114 THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLOWEES. 

autocratic ambition nor the burden-bearers of a 
selfish national aggrandisement. They were mar- 
shalled from no innocent Dumdrudge. Intel- 
ligent freemen they were, whose every home 
was an earthly paradise. But champions of 
that ideal liberty which is the willing yoke-fel- 
low of impartial law, and obedient; to a patriot- 
ism which had all the zeal of impulse and all 
the perseverance of principle, they struggled 
onward, through tented camps and bloody 
fields, to the goal of national victory, displaying 
to the end of their devoted lives at once the 
sacrificial obedience of subjects and the sove- 
reign pride of kings. 

And the cause in which they engaged was one 
of much broader significance than the destiny 
of a single nation. Our civil war cancelled one 
of the greatest factors in the problem of Chris- 
tian civilization. The result of that conflict pro- 
claimed the principle and established the law, 
that slavery and popular government can not 
abide together, corroborating anew the testi- 
mony of history, that no people can maintain 
their own sovereignty while holding another 
people in subjection. Their victory was there- 
fore the victory of civilization, and yet it re- 
stored, not inconsistently, that state of nature 
wherein all men are free and equal, and possess 
all the rights with which they have been en- 
dowed by their Creator. And this service to 



THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLO WEES. 115 

mankind so exalts them above the need of 
praise, that we turn thankfully to the flowers, 
bidding them symbolize the inexpressible tri- 
bute of our hearts, and the subtle eulogy of 
nature. 

But are there not symbols above the flowers, 
comrades of the slain? Is not the life they 
surrendered for the nation still abroad in the 
vitals of the nation ? Is not the increased 
vitality of the American Union and the quick- 
ened sentiment of freedom throughout the 
world simply the measure of their sacrifice % 
Yes, the life they surrendered has been given 
back to us, under that same law of increase 
which sends forth a hundred flowers for the one 
surrendered to the wrath of winter. And so, 
in manifold ways, the slain are yet alive, swell- 
ing the tides of that life invisible, which gathers 
into itself all the goodness and strength of the 
generations, and which, far more than we can 
comprehend, qualifies and determines the activ- 
ities of this tangible world. Heroism, when 
consecrated to a right purpose, and ennobled by 
the spirit of self-sacrifice, can never die : and 
these fallen soldiers live again in the very deeds 
they have wrought ; in the monumental service 
they have rendered to the cause of freedom ; in 
the hearts of all the peoples who now abide 
beneath the sheltering corner-tree of Liberty 
where these heroes fell ; in the free institutions 



116 THE TBIBUTE OF THE FLO WEBS. 

inaugurated or perpetuated by their sacrificial 
patriotism ; in our national Constitution, pre- 
served in all its ancient integrity, and amended 
into harmony, at last, with the Declaration of 
Independence ; in a perfected union of inter- 
dependent states, a union made secure forever, 
as being grounded in the eternal principles of 
justice and truth. They live again in the mul- 
tiplied schools, the happier homes, the busier 
commerce, the broader patriotism, the truer 
Christianity, which have come upon the land as 
the fruits of their sacrifice. And they live 
again, comrades of the slain, even in the sunny 
South, whose strange enchantment was broken 
only by the shock of war, and whose children 
will rise up and bless, even while they mourn, 
the day of her defeat. Flowers, with all gen- 
tleness, for the brave and sunny South, to-day ! 
Flowers, with all thankfulness, for the sturdy 
North, the North valiant and true ! May their 
union be happy as it is secure ! And as the 
two shadowy hosts, the blue and the gray, are 
gathered as one army, now, in the fields of for- 
getfulness that lie around the throne of God, 
may they all live again here upon earth, no 
more distinguished as the blue and the gray, in 
a broad, national patriotism, mantling, ever- 
more, all the animosities, yet displaying, ever- 
more, all the infinite meaning, of that sad and 
awful conflict. 



THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLOWERS. 117 

When Pericles stood over the graves of those 
Athenians who had fallen in the first onset of 
the Peloponnesian war, his greatest boast for 
Athens was of the charity blended with her 
valor. "We have planted everywhere," he 
said, "the imperishable monuments of our 
kindness, as well as of our hostility." If that 
was the pride of pagan Athens, shall not this 
day with its wealth of flowers become a memo- 
rial of the reconciliation even more than of the 
conflict i Even so, comrades of the slain, the 
beautiful symbolism of the flowers shall ever 
magnify, as interpreted by the growing spirit of 
Christian benevolence. There is no law of affin- 
ity, indeed, by which the flowers may distin- 
guish between the blue and the gray. Indi- 
genous in all climes, they grow on the shores of 
the far Escambia and the great gulf, as well by 
the North Atlantic and the beautiful Ohio. 
Yonder, O children of the South, they will not 
shrink from the graves of the blue ! Here, O 
comrades of the slain, they will not shrink from 
the graves of the gray ! There is no partisan- 
ship in the flowers, no race prejudice, no sec- 
tional animosity, no caste, no malice, no strife, 
no vanity. Fragrant everywhere, beautiful ev- 
erywhere, they attain to a symbolism almost 
divine, as if striving to speak of Him who 
"hath made of one blood all nations of men for 
to dwell on all the face of the earth. '* And we 



118 THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLOWERS. 

will not breathe upon the flowers, to-day, any 
spirit foreign to their own pure nature. Nay, 
if they are already possessed of evil spirits, 
then indeed we will exorcise them, if we may, 
by the miracle of love. Smile upon all, beau- 
tiful flowers, even as God smiles upon all ! 

And that would be the voice of the slain, 
could they speak again ; for all genuine courage 
crowns itself with benevolence. ''Hence the 
great men of antiquity,'' as Richter has said, 
" are rather distinguished by their character 
than by their deeds, rather by the trophies of 
peace than those of war ; the plow-heroes of 
battle-fields by an intensity of love, which, as 
in Phocion, sowed the steep cliffs which bound 
the mighty ocean with balmy spice-plants ; 
which in Cato the younger, bewailed his brother 
with all a woman's tenderness, and caused 
Epaminondas to remember the duties of a host 
even on the scaffold ; which made Brutus a ten- 
der husband, Alexander a trustful friend, and 
Gustavus a Christian." 

As for the exaltation of our Union soldiery, 
comrades of the slain, we may confidently leave 
that to the more impartial judgment of history. 
For in history, too, these heroes shall live again. 
Even the myriads who sleeps in nameless graves, 
nameless and unknown, having not so much as 
the silent tribute of the flowers, who seem a 
forgotten sacrifice ; even these, in the silent 



THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLOWERS. 119 

progress of the temple of civilization, shall have 
their undisputed places of honor. 

In the valley of the Nile, its massive founda- 
tions resting in the oldest classic soil of the earth, 
and rising in its proud simplicity as if to pierce 
those tropical skies, there stands one of those 
famous pyramids. It was builded by the king, 
to be at once his impregnable tomb and his im- 
perishable monument. And thousands upon 
thousands of workmen, all from the subject- 
multitudes, were sacrificed in unrequited toil 
upon the great enterprise : no mausoleum for 
their bodies, no monument to their deeds, no 
tablet for their names. But a common work- 
man, one day, unseen by the king or his task- 
masters, carved his own obscure name in the 
imperishable rock. And when so many cen- 
turies had passed away that even history had 
forgotten the royal master-builder, when his 
name had disappeared in the great deep of ob- 
livion, a new world comes to look upon this idle 
wonder of the past, and lo ! the name of the 
despised workman is discovered and heralded 
abroad over all the earth. The name of the 
subject had outlived the name of the king. 

And therein is the true philosophy of history 
illustrated. Civilization, whatever its instru- 
mentalities, is ultimately and pre-eminently for 
the people. And while monarchs may suffer 
their vanity to shape their authority, may build 



120 THE TEIBUTE OF THE FLOWERS. 

Mstory as if it were merely a royal temple, and 
as if Gfod were only a king's chaplain, yet the 
Hand supreme, though invisible, is busy among 
all the craftsmen, working divine transpositions, 
so that in the unveiling of the last days, may 
be, the workmanship despised of men, and the 
names unwritten, shall appear the most glorified 
of all. That Hand unseen, choosing the weak 
things of the world to confound the mighty, 
shall make no small place in history, I think, 
for the common soldiery of the American 
Union. 

And even in the remotest future, comrades of 
the slain, when, through the dim perspective of 
the centuries, Shiloh and Gettysburgh shall 
blend, in some great epic, with Waterloo and 
Blenheim, and Hastings and Tours, and Chalons 
and Marathon ; when the last visible monument 
to their valor shall have crumbled to ruin, ming- 
ling with their hallowed dust ; when the people 
shall forget to strew flowers upon their graves, 
and shall come to weep there no more ; when, at 
last, through the crucible of war, God shall 
have ushered in the reign of perpetual peace, — 
even that peace itself, comrades of the slain, 
shall then become their more enduring monu- 
ment. And to every child of that better time 
the angel of truth shall whisper: "Boast not 
thyself of to-day. To-day is but the harvest of 
the yesterdays. The Present is only the ripen- 



THE TRIBUTE OF THE FLOWERS. 121 

ing of the Past. All the generations that have 
gone before and disappeared were but the 
craftsmen working to a divine Plan, themselves 
a part of the structure they wrought, even as 
the corals which build themselves, one upon 
another, up out of the stormy sea. And thou, 
even thou, livest in peace, only because thy 
fathers died in war." 

Go now, comrades of the slain, tribute-bearers 
of the nation, and lay these flowers upon their 
graves. But go in joy for them, even more 
than in sorrow. Do not shame the tribute of 
the flowers with tears of pity. Whisper not 
among the graves, nor tread lightly there, nor 
march with muffled drums, as if in the presence 
of the dead. But rather salute them, comrades 
of the slain, as living now that beautiful, mani- 
fold life which becomes within us a cherished 
memory, around us in all the world a force 
for righteousness, and above us the symbol of 
immortality. 



The Fallen Hero. 



[Written for the Grant Memorial Service, First Methodist Protest- 
ant Church, Hockville Centre, L. I., Aug. 2, 1885.] 

BRIGHT on the fallen hero's brow 
Behold the crown of love and fame ! 
While o'er the shrine of freedom, now, 
The nations breathe his rising name. 

u Let us have peace/' the chieftain said, 
"Whose arm was strong in timely war; 
Whose heart of flame the millions led, 
And turned to freedom's polar star. 

Forever one, the Union stands, 

Forever one, the soldiers sleep ,• 
The hostile dead are clasping hands ; 

May God, o'er all, his vigils keep. 

warrior soul ! whose prayer was peace, 
For evermore, thy battles done, ■ 

The King commands thee Death's release, 
The King proclaims thy glory won. 

Almighty Ruler, only thee, 

In sorrow's song, we magnify, 
Beneath whose rod all powers that be, 

Ordained stand, condemned shall die. 

Seal Thou our land for Freedom's own, 
Seal Thou our laws to Truth divine j 

And, in Thy wisdom, Lord, make known 
The law of love which seals us thine. 
(122) 



Idols of the Nineteenth 
Century. 



A SERMON. 



"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy god, and Him only 

SHALT THOU SERVE."— Matt. iv. 10. 

INTUITIVE in the human heart, everywhere 
and in all generations, there prevails an ap- 
prehension of the existence of a supernatural and 
creative Power, accompanied with some sense 
of gratitude to that Power for things of the past, 
and of dependence upon it for the present and 
the future. This faith-faculty finds expression 
in the universal sentiment, and the almost uni- 
versal act, of worship. Without revelation, 
however, this religious faculty, always seeking 
a Gfod as instinctively as the flower struggles 
after the sunlight, is prone impulsively to attach 
itself to the creature instead of the Creator, the 
object of worship often reflecting in some meas- 
ure the intellectual temperament of the wor- 
shiper. The more philosophical pagans, for 
example, deified those active forces and those 

(123) 



124 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

outward manifestations of nature, which ap- 
peared to them as the ultimate fountains of 
human happiness. The tribes inclining to habits 
of domesticity, the home-loving hearts, paid 
divine honors to ancestral spirits, their hero- 
worship finally developing into a regular cultus, 
having a theology and a priesthood. Retro- 
spective minds, on the contrary, and those in 
whom the love of national traditions was pecu- 
liarly strong, degenerated into mere place-wor- 
shipers, making weary pilgrimages to holy cities, 
sacred mountains and glorified temples. 

" Religion is, in the beginning, the learning of 
God," says one ; which is beautifully true, as 
far as it is true at all. But religion in the pagan 
world has begun with the simple, sincere panting 
of profound souls after God, a groping for Him 
as one follows indistinct voices in the night ; 
whereas Christianity becomes at once the assur- 
ance of immediate spiritual safety and of ulti- 
mate refuge: yonder, a light in the window, here, 
a hand in the dark. And the manifestations 
of God in all history, as it seems to me, have 
had constant reference to the quickening and 
the development of the spiritual faculties. If 
God first appeared in a form visible and human, 
then as a voice, afterward only in dreams, and 
finally as a spirit of inspiration, this receding 
series of manifestations by no means implies that 
God ever conveyed himself away from man, but 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTTTKY. 125 

rattier that He has been always drawing nearer, 
though invisible to the natural heart, thus to 
encourage and test the spiritual faculties of men, 
if happily they might discern that He filleth all 
things ; that the invisible things of Him from 
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
understood by the things that are made ; and 
that in Him we indeed live, and move, and have 
our being. 

But so great has been the tendency to idolatry 
that the inspirations, the dreams, the voices, the 
advents, were all alike inadequate, until God 
was lovingly constrained to reconcile the world 
to himself by the gift of His only-begotten Son, 
who, possessing all the fulness of the godhead 
bodily, devoted a sacrificial ministry, finished in 
a vicarious death, to the work of wooing the 
human family from their idols, and gaining their 
hearts, through himself, back to the Fafher. 
"He who commanded the light to shine out of 
darkness hath shone into our hearts, to give 
us the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
God, in the face of Jesus Christ." The Gospel 
is then, indeed, the revelation of Christ as reflect- 
ing the face of God and interposed between the 
idolatrous world and all the world's idols. 
Iconoclastic as the world is, however, with its 
Gospel armor on and the Gospel spirit ablaze 
within it, there is no small showing of idolatry 
round about us ; and very civilized though it 



126 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUET. 

is L veiled with all the modern refinements, and 
beautiful with its coat of many colors, the idola- 
try of to-day is precisely the thing it has always 
been. Those possessed of its spirit are still 
making unto themselves golden images, in the 
very presence of the living God. 

And when we come up to the idols of the nine- 
teenth century, beloved Christians, what a glit- 
tering pantheon of them we really find ourselves 
surrounded and beset with ! In the idolatry of 
civilization, indeed, as in all the factors of 
civilization, so much differentiation has been go- 
ing on, and the evil, like the good, has become so 
complex, that we can hardly put the brand of 
religious condemnation upon individual things. 
In the temple of idols, however, to-day as always, 
there are three shrines, one for nature-worship, 
one for hero-worship, and another for money- 
worship. Into this temple, mingling with the 
multitude, let us go and herald the message of 
the King : ' ' Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
God, and Him only shalt thou serve." 

When nature-worship is spoken of, we instinc- 
tively and somewhat complacently, refer it to a 
past age, thinking of those ancient cave-dwellers, 
perhaps, who worshipped the mountains which 
overshadowed them ; or of those Peruvians who 
came down from the mountains to worship the 
sea ; or of the Egyptians, who worshipped their 
great river ; or the Pigians, who prayed to the 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY. 127 

stars ; or of the Samoyedes, who are represent- 
ed as bowing before the rising snn. We may- 
think of those who have ascribed divine person- 
ality to sunlight and storm, to the dawn, the 
clouds, the lightning, the trees. But how shall 
we distinguish between that emotional idolatry 
which brings the rude savage to the worship of 
the visible forms of nature, and that calm, phil- 
osophical idolatry which deifies natural law, the 
ultimate atom, or the predominant force ? We 
pity that poor Samoyede woman, who, when 
asked if she ever prayed, replied, with beautiful 
simplicity in her self -righteousness : " Every 
morning I step out of my tent and bow before 
the sun, and say, ' When thou risest, I, too, rise 
from my bed.' And at evening I say, ' When 
thou sinkest, I, too, sink down to rest.' But 
there are wild people who never say their morn- 
ing and evening prayers. ' ' We pity so wayward 
a seeker after God ; and we despise rather than 
pity the still more ignorant Asiatic who prays to 
the plough he follows, the basket he carries, the 
sword he wields, or the net he casts into the sea. 
But what shall we say of eminent philosophers 
who recognize the subtle influence of environ- 
ment, but can not discern the workings of Pro- 
vidence ; who exalt atoms above angels, and 
whose agnosticism, while proudly excluding the 
rational idea of a supernatural Lawgiver, can 
readily entertain the wildest sentimentalism, if it 



128 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY. 

only takes the deified name of law ? What shall 
we say of those whose minds are preoccupied, to 
the exclusion of the claims of Society as well 
as the claims of God, with great mining inter- 
ests, coal-fields in Pennsylvania or gold-veins in 
the farther West % Do not these worship the 
mountains, too, as well as did the Mexican cave- 
dwellers % What shall we say of the multitudes 
in the industrial walks of life, who give all their 
attention and all their energy to their manufac- 
turing, railroading, type-setting, house-building, 
sowing, cultivating, harvesting, oyster-growing ; 
with much dreaming over it all, their anxious 
hearts reserving no time or thought for the 
spiritual life % Is there not something very like 
fetich- worship in all that % Ah, yes ! civilized 
though they are, there are nature-worshippers 
still, and even fetich-worshippers. And if we dis- 
tinguish at all between the emotional idolatry of 
the heathen nations and the philosophical and 
commercial idolatry of these times, we must dis- 
criminate in favor of those whose ignorance 
breathed sincerity, withal, and whose worship 
was mantled with holy aspirations. These 
nature-worshippers of the pagan world, indeed, 
had a simplicity which was akin to godliness ; 
they were true to their religious instincts, they 
obeyed the inward voice of the consciousness of 
God, and, in their strivings after Him, they 
spontaneously reverenced those objects which 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 129 

seemed to them most nearly allied to the super- 
natural, or which affected them most sensibly 
for good or evil. Cicero taught that the truth 
was hidden, from the beginning, in the great 
deep of Nature. And as Cicero's mind was rather 
the mirror of all that was best in the pagan 
world, than a fountain of original thought, this 
teaching of his reveals the motive of nature- 
worship, in the olden times. It was more a 
spirit of inquiry after invisible truth than of 
reverence for material objects, the latter being 
only the symbolism of the former. But the 
nature -worship of to-day has no religious apolo- 
gy to offer. It is dissociated entirely from the 
emotional faculties, and devoid of any perspec- 
tive of faith; it is wilful, premeditated, irreligious, 
carnal ; as irrational as it is irreligious ; an idola- 
try which is shielded from the wrath of God by 
none of those extenuating circumstances which 
heathenism might urge ; an idolatry which wor- 
ships the creature, when the Creator is being yet 
more gloriously revealed than upon mount Sinai ; 
which stubbornly says, It is from everlasting to 
everlasting, when clearly sensible that it ought 
to say, Thou art from everlasting to everlasting ; 
which looks earthward even when the heavens 
are being unveiled, and the whispering dome of 
the soul is musical with voices from around the 
throne. 
And so indeed if these modern nature- wor- 

9 



130 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY. 

shippers do not pray to their idols, the wheels, 
the mines, the masonry, the motors, the flocks, 
the herds, the golden harvests, and all the ser- 
viceable things of this practical age, to which 
the hidden sacrifices of the heart are offered, a 
still greater sin is revealed, the sin of honoring 
these things with the vital service due to God 
alone, while yet ashamed to confess them before 
the world, and the additional sin of quenching 
that divine sentiment of worship, the sincere 
exercise of which, even upon idols, is calculated 
to bring the honest soul somewhat nearer to God 
himself. the exceeding sinfulness of this civ- 
ilized idolatry ! Does the thought of this sin 
touch our own hearts, beloved Christians, with 
the memory of vain oblations, with the pain of 
having robbed God 3 Let us examine our own 
hearts to-day, in the light of this true word, 
realizing how our worship is thereby at once 
directed and circumscribed, only opening the 
wimdows of the soul to that higher pantheism 
which sees in nature the evidence of the univer- 
sal activity and supremacy of God, and another 
decisive warrant for His jealous claim on hu- 
man hearts. 

" The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the 

plains, 
Are not these, O soul, the vision o P Him who reigns ? 
Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can 

meet; 
Closer is He than "breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." 



IDOLS OP THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 131 

It is to be feared, furthermore, that hero-wor- 
ship, or man-worship, is by no means extinct. 
In the sadly beautiful mythology of the Scandi- 
navians, Odin and Niort, who are represented as 
coming from G-odheim, the home of gods, to 
Menheim, the home of men, were, with little 
doubt, the leaders of some conquering race, dei- 
fied solely because of their triumphs in war. 
And yet those early heroes, clothed with the 
heavenly attributes with which the religious 
element always invests its objects of worship, 
were the only divinities of the Teutonic tribes for 
hundreds of years. The Greeks, also, crowned 
as that people were with all the aptitudes and 
possibilities that develop into civilization and 
incline toward religious truth, canonized and 
worshipped the ancestral heroes of the race, and 
these human divinities were hardly transfigured 
before them, withal, but retained those human 
passions which find expression in banquetings, 
quarrels and conspiracies, and those human lim- 
itations which necessitate food and sleep, to- 
gether with physical means of locomotion. The 
adoration of living men, moreover, has not been 
an unusual thing in the history of paganism. 
At Lystra, as you all remember, Barnabas and 
Paul were hailed as Jupiter and Minerva. To 
the people of ancient Mexico, Cortes and the 
other Spaniards with him appeared as gods of 
the sea, or children of the sun. In various parts 



132 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUKY, 

of Africa, the first explorers and missionaries 
have been called gods, or the children of heaven. 
The Indians of Toltique, to recall what might be 
denominated the climax of hero-worship, have 
been known to pay divine honors to one of the 
older living members of their own tribe. 

'Now while this practice of heathenism, largely 
passed into history, cannot, in its grossest forms, 
be charged against modern society, is not the 
hero after all one of the idols of the nineteenth 
century % The hero-worship of to-day is elusive 
because it partakes of the peculiarity of all 
modern worship in having a meagre symbolism. 
The kingdom of idolatry, like all spiritual king- 
doms, is within. Its cultus includes very little 
of the ceremonial. It is the silent surrender of 
the heart. But so far, indeed, is this species of 
idolatry from final extinction, that a kind of sub- 
limated hero-worship has been set up, as a kind 
of spiritual adjunct to a system of philosophy. 
Auguste Comte it was who' undertook to con- 
struct a philosophy which should rise above 
the theological state, up through the meta- 
physical state, high up into the Comptean 
heaven of the positive. And so he built every 
thing into it except religion, admitted every 
workman to the task except G-od, having a pre- 
conceived opinion that his philosophy would be 
better off without any touch of the spiritual. 
But when the system was about ready to be sent 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUET. 133 

out to the world, Comte discovered that it was 
not organic, that it was all fragments, and the 
fragments only dry bones. To obviate the diffi- 
culty, therefore, and to get Positivism on its 
feet, so to speak, he invented religious liga- 
ments, in the form of a deified humanity, calling 
the ideal goodness and greatness of the human 
family, as realized in the heroes of the race, 
the Great Being. And this Positivism, albeit 
eminent disciples have fed it upon literary 
genius, adding the charm of the noblest fiction 
to the force of the most labored philosophy, al- 
beit these eminent disci pies have each in turn 
essayed to breathe into it the breath of life, it 
remains to this day, beyond peradventure, the 
most artificial skeleton in all the charnel-house 
of dead philosophies. 

And yet this hero-worship is practiced at the 
altars of individual hearts, even when excluded 
by these same votaries from their systems of 
philosophy. When B-omola, George Eliot' s hero- 
ine, was represented as rearing a floral altar to 
Savonarola, hero-worship as an element of phil- 
osophy perhaps received its boldest, as well as 
its most sadly beautiful, recognition. We find 
reflections and images of it still in philosophy 
and in fiction, but that does not concern us so 
much as the hero-worship of the individualized, 
practical, and perhaps unconscious, kind, of 
which we and our next door neighbors may pos- 



134 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

sibly find ourselves not altogether innocent. 
The eccentric brother who broke the silence of a 
Friends' meeting with the exclamation. ' ' Verily, 
I perceive that children are idols ! " may have 
greatly exaggerated the truth, or even have erred 
entirely. Howbeit, we will not condemn the ex- 
altation of the children, so far as it is rational, 
and expresses itself in that great degree of pa- 
rental care and watchful tenderness which is jus- 
tified and demanded by the holy relationship of 
parentage. ISTor should we lament that degree 
of reverence for old age which Confucius made 
a part of his ancient philosophy of life. In- 
deed, we are not prone, I think, to over-estimate 
the sacredness of the ties of nature in these days. 
We are rather inclined to go away from home 
for our heroes. Relationship might be made 
something more of in the nineteenth century, 
without fear of breaking the commandment about 
worshiping God alone ; and, therefore, while 
the home itself may become a pantheon of idols 
from which God is sinfully shut out, the modern 
tendency is to go abroad for idols, much as for 
fashions and articles of general merchandise. 

This practical hero-worship displays itself in 
the surrender of the people's will to the fiat of 
a king, the sacrifice of sentiments of righteous- 
ness to the idea of passive obedience, often car- 
rying the practice to the extreme of idolatry ; 
displays itself in the enthusiasm of an American 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 135 

crowd for the American candidate, the sin not 
inhering in the enthusiasm, to be sure, but in the 
sacrifice of substance and of honor, too often con- 
sumed by that burning zeal ; displays itself in the 
building of costly monuments to the memory 
of public men, a custom so commendable, a sym- 
bolism so beautiful, that even our fears are 
charmed and melted into praise, and yet so 
fruitful of evil throughout history as to have 
turned many nations from God, supplanting Him 
in the sanctuary of the heart with divinities of 
flesh and blood, and suggesting the prophecy 
that some later posterity shall pronounce even 
America a nation of veritable hero- worshipers, 
to whom the names of Washington, Lincoln, 
Garfield and Grant were as sacred as those of 
Wodan, Donar and Tiu to the ancient Germans. 
And there is too often a sinful approach to hero- 
worship even in the Christian Church itself, the 
voice of ancient councils being accepted in the 
interpretation of the Word of God, to the dis- 
trust of the Holy Spirit, whose testimentary* 
office is to lead disciples " into all truth." The 
most sincere Christian congregations may uncon- 
sciously illustrate this tendency when they time 
their opinions by the fragmentary thought of a 
popular preacher, forgetting to "prove all 
things" by consulting the Bible, the infallible 
regulator for all longitudes ; while this ecclesi- 
astical idolatry has its climax, perhaps, when 



136 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTUBY. 

prayers are sent through the confessional over 
to Rome, rather than through Christ up to Grod. 

Whatever the gifts, whoever the votaries, 
whether the offerings are prompted by impulses 
Of the domestic, political, philosophical or ec- 
clesiastical kind, let us stand amid the smoking 
incense of this altar of hero-worship and herald 
faithfully the message of the King: "Thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only 
shalt thou serve." 

All the idols of the nineteenth century are per- 
haps represented in money-worship, for money 
is the great open-faced mirror in which the heart 
beholds an image of every desire which is en- 
graven over the altars of its hidden tabernacle. 
In the language of political economy, " money 
is that which passes freely from hand to hand 
throughout the community, in final discharge of 
debts and full payment for commodities, being 
accepted equally without reference to the char- 
acter or credit of the person offering it, and 
which the person who receives it does not intend 
to consume, or enjoy, or apply, to any other use 
than to tender it in turn to others in discharge 
of debts or payment for commodities." Money 
is a medium of exchange, so facilitating trade 
that the Long Island farmer who owns a number 
of horses which he desires the value of in lum- 
ber from Maine, is not compelled to drive or 
transport the horses all the way to Maine, to 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 137 

conclude an actual exchange, or suffer the prob- 
able disappointment of learning that the lum- 
ber-seller does not want the horses ; but he can 
sell to the market and buy in the market, money 
becoming again the common standard by which 
the comparative values of all articles of mer- 
chandise are estimated. Money, too, is the stand- 
ard by which future obligations are expressed, 
when one receives credit, and the graduated 
scale by which the decline of a man' s credit is 
signified when he fails to pay his debts. But 
what meaning have these frigid words in the 
torrid zone of the money- worshipers % The 
Dollar is to him the Philosopher's Stone, the 
Bimini fountain of perpetual youth, the Aladdin's 
lamp which is to materialize all the fancies of 
his dream -life, the god Wish, who is able to 
realize for him that worldly pleasure, that social 
recognition, that political preferment, that aris- 
tocratic ease and that siderial independence, for 
which his heart is yearning so passionately. 

We may not disregard, however, the proper 
use of money. The Dollar can take Christian 
civilization and become an embassador of Christ, 
and is by no means the least among the apostles, 
if it only waits at Jerusalem until the days of 
Pentecost are fully come. Bacon said that 
riches, to the Christian, are as baggage to an 
army. The baggage is essential to the army, 
but it, nevertheless, impedes the march : so 



138 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTTTKY. 

riches, though necessary, impede the Christian's 
progress heavenward. But the application of 
that figure must be very guarded, inasmuch as, 
if we take a whole campaign into account in- 
stead of a single march, the baggage facilitates 
progress, as well as supplying comforts and ne- 
cessities. Indeed, money is adapted for almost 
any use except abuse, while the man who wor- 
ships the dollar, like the soldier who should 
worship his rations instead of eating them, can 
hardly make progress in any worthy direction. 
The love of money, howbeit, will almost inevi- 
tably lead to the worship of money. Worship 
is faith working by love, but the works of love 
are always sacrificial. Fear, admiration, awe, 
gratitude, desire, may be akin to worship, but 
the essential element of worship is sacrificial 
love. It is along this line of mental activities 
that the love of money ripens into money-wor- 
ship. A man begins by looking upon money as 
a very serviceable thing, and, with a view to its 
righteous ministry, determines to make use of 
it. "There is a good deal of leverage in this 
instrument called money," he says within him- 
self, " and I shall get as good a hold upon it, and 
turn it to as much account as possible." But 
from pursuing it constantly, to the neglect of 
the intellectual and spiritual faculties, and from 
much dreaming about it, he begins to personify 
it, to feel that it has a presence, with volition, 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 139 

and the power to elude the schemes of men for 
its possession, the ability not only to do chores 
for one, but to consummate those larger plans 
to which one's own talent is not equal. — " G-ood 
morning, Mr. Money ! Ah ! Money, I am glad 
to see you ; indeed, I have been waiting for an 
interview a long time. I wish to say, first, how 
heartily I appreciate the service you have done 
me. And now, Money, finding you at once so 
indispensable and so companionable, I have con- 
cluded to ask you into partnership with me. I 
wish our intimacy to extend to social, political 
and religious affairs. We are to have only 
mutual friends, and will vote always in the same 
interests, and will say our prayers together un- 
der the proudest steeple. The firm name shall 
be Money and I." 

But after this compromise, with the vain endea- 
vor to serve both God and Mammon, the mind of 
this man passes into the extreme stage of idola- 
try, and he deifies this natural servant of So- 
ciety. — "Almighty Money, I surrender the own- 
ership of the house to you ! I will move in 
with you, engage in your service, make all the 
sacrifices you demand ! Why, yes, to be sure, 
I have thought something of religion, the claims 
of Christ and the moral law, and all that sort of 
thing ; and, even now, I purpose — but — well, 
never mind. That belongs to the future." 

And just this way, the master softening into 



140 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

the companion, the companion degrading him- 
self to servitude, a many a man surrenders to 
money. Whereupon, opening the door of his 
heart' s sanctuary, he discovers that all the good 
angels of his nature have been cast out, and the 
whole tabernacle is corrupted into a temple of 
Mammon. The altar is there, and the poor slave 
finds that he must redeem all his pledges of 
sacrifice. He must surrender his faith, his con- 
science, his honor ; all rendered as an offer- 
ing at that same greedy shrine, where muni- 
cipal counsellors sacrifice their public trusts, 
parliaments their principles, and rulers the lib- 
erties of their people ; the same shrine, too, at 
which more human sacrifices have been offered 
than to the Mexican Huitzil ; for what are mid- 
night murders but an almost unbroken record of 
offerings to the idolatrous love of money ? And 
iow fruitless, withal, is this terrible sacrifice, 
when upon the sea of life the winds of justice 
or of misfortune rise, sweeping away the smoke 
of the incense, and sweeping away so often the 
visionary pleasure, honor and power, which were 
the motive of the sacrifice. that men might 
distinguish more clearly between the ministry 
and the mastery of money ! that men might 
realize the vanity of all riches that come in by 
the door of intellectual and spiritual sacrifice ! 

Is money- worship satisfying, withal % The 
dying miser having no better comfort for his 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 141 

perturbed heart, laid a bag of gold upon his 
breast. It was the worshiper proving his god 
in the time of extremity. "No ! " he cried, "it 
will not do ! " Is money- worship helpful, with- 
al ? "Wherefore should I die, being so rich?" 
exclaimed Cardinal Beaufort. "If the whole 
realm would save my life, I am able either by 
policy to get it, or by wealth to buy it. Will 
not death be bribed \ " 

But the money- worshipers are not all rich ; 
perhaps the majority of them are very impe- 
cunious, indeed. Men who crave, but do not 
obtain, are often the most ardent of devotees. 
The poor Lazarus lying at the rich man's gate 
may commit more flagrant idolatry, through 
€oveteousness, than those who sit around the 
rich man's table, through vanity. The great evil 
of money-worship, however, and of the love of 
money, to any passionate degree, is its tendency 
to allure men into the worship of all objects 
whose value may be expressed, or even guessed 
at, in terms of money. Men whose hearts are 
afire with the love of money are continually set- 
ting a price upon everything. The worshiper 
always sees visions of his god in all material 
objects, for the whole universe reflects the faith 
and passion of his heart. The money-worshiper, 
therefore, cannot look upon any thing, or tree, 
or mountain, or field, or river, or animal, but 
that his fancy coins it into money, and he be- 



142 IDOLS OF THE NIKETEENTTH CENTUBY. 

comes a fetich-worshiper at last, as seeing in the 
objects of nature no intrinsic beauty or divine 
purpose, but only a symbol of the Almighty 
Dollar. And from that stage of idolatry the 
stejD is but short to setting a price upon honor, 
and all the principles that stand guard over 
manhood ; whereupon bribery, embezzlement, 
and all their kindred crimes, find the readiest 
access to the avenues of society. 

Ah, how the social problems of this age would 
be simplified, if only this shrine of the money- 
worshipers were melted down by the love of 
God ! For us. beloved Christians, there is the 
one supreme duty. We are to worship God, 
and Him only, admitting the Holy Spirit to the 
guardianship of our own hearts, and endeavor- 
ing, by greater devotedness and the most cheer- 
ful sacrifices, to extend the Gospel of the King- 
dom of God to other hearts. And if, withal, the 
sacrifice should seem to us very great, if we have 
to forego the realization of desires harmless in 
themselves, is not the promised inheritance "a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ?' ? 
""Without God." says Jean Paul, " we are lone- 
ly throughout eternity ; but if we have God we 
are more warmly, more intimately, more stead- 
fastly united than by friendship and love. I am 
then no longer alone with my spirit. Its great 
first Friend, the Everlasting, whom it recognizes 
the inborn friend of its innermost soul, will 



IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 143 

abandon it as little as it can do itself, and in the 
midst of the impure or empty whirl of trifles and 
of sins, on the market-place and the battle field, 
I stand with closed breast, in which the Almighty 
and All-holy speaks to me, and reposes before me 
like a near sun, behind which the outer world 
lies in darkness. I have entered into his church, 
the temple of the Universe, and remain therein 
blessed, devout, pious, even if the temple should 
become dark, or cold, or undermined by graves. 
What I do, or suffer, is as little a sacrifice to 
Him as I can offer- one to myself ; I love Him, 
whether I suffer or not. The flame from heaven 
falls on the altar of sacrifice and consumes the 
beast, but the flame and the priest remain. If 
my great Friend demand something from me, 
the heaven and the earth seem glorious to me ; if 
He deny me any thing, it is a storm on the ocean, 
but it is spanned by rainbows, and I recognize 
above it the kindly sun." 

' ' There is in man, ' ' says Carlyle, ' i a higher than 
love of happiness : he can do without happiness, 
and instead thereof find blessedness. Thou canst 
love the earth even while it injures thee, and even 
because it injures thee. For this a greater than 
Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Know- 
est thou that worship of Sorrow ? The temple 
thereof, opened some eighteen hundred years 
ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungles, 
the habitation of doleful creatures : nevertheless, 



144 IDOLS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

venture forward : in a low crypt, arched out of 
fallen fragments, thou findest the altar still there, 
and the sacred lamp perennially burning." 

But higher than all other words to-day is the 
voice of Him who spake as never man spake, 
a word of authority as well as of wisdom : 
" Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and. 
Him only shalt thou serve." And the only 
hope for society and for the world is, that men 
may be persuaded to look up and worship God 
without any mental reservations, blessed alike 
whether His will means immediate happiness or 
sorrow. Little children when watching falling 
meteors call them falling stars ; but when the 
last meteor has disappeared in the darkness of 
earth, they forget their fancy in the glittering 
reality, beholding the stars indeed : so when the 
Cerberus of Idolatry is driven away from the 
hearts of men, and they can come out of that 
little inner world where all their gods are falling 
idols, they will look up into the heavens, wor- 
shipping God. that the emancipation of all 
hearts and of all the people might come just 
now, and that all voices of prayer might ascend 
unto Him who filleth all things ! 

" For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, 
Both for themselves and those who call them friends I 
For so the whole round earth is, every way, 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. M 



Song of the New Year, 



A 



CROSS my threshold, one by one, 
Mute visitors with measured tread, 

Like trudging slaves, when tasks are done, 
Have courtesied low and softly fled. 



One smiling came, and garlands bore, 
And one with stately, solemn mien j 

And some their stoles of sorrow wore, 
With sprays of hopeful evergreen. 

But came they solemn, sad or gay, 
They added substance to my store j 

Or, rudely welcomed, bore away 
Some pilfered jewel from my door. 

These pilgrims are the transient years, 
In sojourn, housed with you and me. 

They pledge us joy in flasks of tears! 
Their parent is eternity ! 

And they are rich in holy things 

For them that choose the better part j 

And they are strong as tyrant kings, 
To rob the thoughtless, carnal heart. 

bright New Year, with earnest face, 
Our prayeiful spirits welcome thee ! 

Be thou, indeed, a year of grace, 
A year of righteous jubilee. 

O Thou, from whose outreaching hand 

The years, bright sheaves of goodness, fall, 

Reveal thy purpose to command 
Thy crowning wisdom over all. 

10 (145) 



Paul's Message to the 
Athenians. 



PAUL'S second great missionary journey 
was peculiarly determined by Providence. 
His conrse was not self -planned, nor Ms places 
of sojourn pre-chosen. And while "they that 
conducted Paul brought him to Athens," driven 
by what seemed an accident of the sea, yet, 
even here, a divinely appointed mission awaited 
him. 

Athens was the centre of a civilization which 
represented the highest possible development 
of Paganism. The glory of the city, indeed, 
had departed, and even her political indepen- 
dence had been swept away by the overshadow- 
ing dominion of Pome. But, notwithstanding 
all her misfortunes, Athens was still the intel- 
lectual metropolis of the heathen world, the 
school-mistress of her conquerors, and the 



mother of arts 



And eloquence." 
(146) 



Paul's message to the Athenians. 147 

We may suppose the apostle to have landed at 
Peiraeus, about four miles distant from the 
ruins of the upper city. He would pass thence 
through the "long walls" of Themistocles and 
enter Athens proper at the Peirsean gate. Emerg- 
ing from the bastion which the wall was made to 
form at this point, and coming within the circuit 
of the great enclosure, the apostle would almost 
immediately find himself in the Agora, or mar- 
ket-place. 

Paul is surrounded, now, by the monuments 
of a wonderful history. Already, while far at 
sea, he might have beheld the u|3lif ted spear and 
the helmet's plume of the colossal statue of 
Athene ; afterward the bronze triton that sur- 
mounted the "Tower of the Winds;" or the 
Doric Theseium, destined, in later and better 
times, to become a Christian temple, in which 
Paul, being dead, was yet to speak, and where 
Christianized Athenians should fulfil the jesting 
promise of their fathers, and "hear him again 
concerning this matter." But, arrived within 
the city, he found a perfect wilderness of art. 
Here, in the market-place, stood the altar of the 
twelve gods, and the statues of the ten heroes 
who gave their names to the Athenian tribes. 
Running westward from the Agora, was the 
famous "Street of Tripods," ranked on either 
side by its numberless votive shrines. And, 
yonder, overshadowing this same street, rose 



148 paul's message to the Athenians. 

tlie great stronghold of this land of the "fair 
humanities," the Acropolis: the Propeileum, 
with whose grand proportions Pericles covered 
the five doorways to the citadel ; the Erech- 
theium, standing upon the site of the legendary 
contest between Athene and Poseidon for the 
possession of the soil of Attica, and designed, 
architecturally, to relieve the boldness of the 
Parthenon ; and over all the Parthenon itself, 
its white, Pentelic marble embodying a concep- 
tion of beauty and sublimity never to be ex- 
celled ; every space and angle of the match- 
less edifice containing an art- wonder ; peopled 
by the painted or sculptured images of gods, 
and heroes, and men, and reproducing with all 
the power of the ripest genius, the fair stories 
of legend and the stern events of history. It 
was, indeed, a wonderful city. Themistocles 
and Cimon had given it strength ; Pericles, with 
Ictinus and Pheidias, had made it marvellously 
beautiful ; poets and philosophers had crowned 
its history with a halo of terrestrial wisdom. 
But all these considerations had no effect upon 
Paul, the missionary, except that of making 
him the more sensible of the people's spiritual 
need. " His spirit was provoked within him, as 
he beheld the city full of idols." ''Whoever 
does not desire to see Athens," exclaimed an 
ancient writer, " is stupid ; whoever sees it with- 
out being delighted, is still more stupid." But 



paul's message to the Athenians. 149 

while the religious significance attaching to the 
wonders of Athens might enhance their value to 
Lysippus, for Paul this religious element was a 
fatal detraction. 

Coming to the degree of Paul's knowledge of 
Grecian literature and history, we may conjec- 
ture that he was neither so ignorant of Pagan 
literature as Renan seemed disposed to believe, 
nor yet so thoroughly schooled in the literature 
of Gfreece as Baumgarten thinks him to have 
been. But, all controversy on that subject aside, 
Paul had a wonderful mission to fulfil in Athens, 
and he was so pre-occupied with the supreme 
purpose to which he had dedicated himself, that 
he had no time to display secular knowledge. 
He had not come to admire Greeks who were 
dead, nor to glorify their handiwork : he had 
come to preach to Greeks that were living ; to 
preach a living faith in a living God. 

These Athenians had more gods than homes ; 
Paul represented a people peculiar for their stern 
monotheism. These Athenians conceived that 
the most perfect revelation was materialistic 
beauty ; Paul had come to urge the royal claims 
of One who, to a carnal judgment, possessed no 
form or comeliness. They were a people whose 
very idolatry was the ground-work of their 
history, and the inspiration of their greatest 
achievements ; Paul belonged to a people who 
regarded the image on Csesar's tribute-money 



150 Paul's message to the Athenians. 

as a species of idolatry, and who, in a fit of 
rebellious wrath, had torn down the golden 
eagle which Herod had presumed to place over 
the entrance to their imageless temple. To these 
Athenians, finally, death was the end, the ultima 
thule, of human destiny ; to Paul and his glad 
tidings, death was simply the crucible of life, 
out of which God' s chosen ones are ushered in- 
to the city which hath foundations. And, there- 
fore, so far from concluding that these apostolic 
heart-stirrings indicated a lack of artistic sensi- 
bility, we ought rather to assume that his 
righteous indignation was somewhat propor- 
tionate to his knowledge and culture. A man 
of finest spiritual susceptibility, it was to 
him a matter of great lamentation, that this 
beautiful city, a city of so many natural and 
intellectual charms, should be wholly given to 
idolatry ; for Paul required no great historic 
knowledge of this people to convince him that 
these matchless works of art were degraded to 
the service of one of the narrowest and coarsest 
systems of mythology that the name of religion 
had ever hallowed. It was Beauty, in her finest 
robes, serving at the lowest shrines. That Paul 
was right in imputing all this splendid display to 
a false religious inspiration, is proven beyond a 
doubt ; for Grote informs us, that Pheidias 1 great 
statue of Minerva was made of the most costly ma- 
terials, ivory and gold, instead of marble, not 



Paul's message to the Athenians. 151 

because these materials were best in an artistic 
sense, but '" as being most consistent with the rev- 
erence due to the gods ;" and Quintilian thought 
that the great statue of Jupiter Olympius, at 
Elis, ' ' added to the religion of all who beheld it." 
But as for Paul, whatever his judgment upon 
these wonders in themselves, Christian sentiment 
is justly expressed in the words of Farrar : "It 
was impossible for him to love, impossible to re- 
gard even with complacence, an art which was 
avowedly the handmaid of Idolatry and covertly 
the patroness of Shame. And our regret for the 
extinguished brilliancy of Athens will be less 
keen, when we bear in mind that, more than any 
other city, she has been the corruptress of the 
world. She kindled the altars of her genius 
with unhallowed incense and fed them with 
strange fires. . . . . . Better the uncom- 
promising Hebraism, which asks what concord 
hath Christ with Belial and the temple of G-od with 
idols, than the corrupt Hellenism which, under 
pretence of artistic sensibility, or archeological 
information, has left its deep taint on modern 
literature, and seems never happy unless it is 
raking amid the embers of forgotten lusts." 

The Agora, or market-place, where Paul en- 
countered the Epicurians and Stoics, was almost 
entirely enclosed within a crescent of renowned 
hills. On the south-east the Acropolis, the site 
of the oldest, as of the greatest, buildings in 



152 Paul's message to the Athenians. 

the city ; westward from tlie Acropolis the Areo- 
pagus, or hill of Mars, which was the place of 
judgment ; still farther toward the south-east, 
completing the semi-circle, rose the Pnyx bill, 
overshadowing the supposed site of the ancient 
Athenian Assembly. From the Agora Paul was 
conducted to the Areopagus, by a flight of rock- 
hewn steps, which may still be seen, and, the 
summit being reached, they placed him on the 
"Stone of Impudence," from which the accused 
before the Court of the Areopagus were wont to 
defend themselves. "Thou bringest certain 
strange things to our ears," they said. "May 
we know what this new teaching is which is 
spoken by thee ? " 

The populace of Athens had long since out- 
grown the habitual industry enforced by the 
laws of Solon. "If a father had not taught his 
son some art or profession, Solon relieved the 
son from all obligation to maintain him in his 
old age." But these degenerate Athenians were 
idlers with itching ears, sporting in the fast- 
fading twilight of a glorious day, and yet so 
blind with vanity and mental decrepitude as to 
be insensible of the fact that the day had de- 
parted ! The contempt, therefore, with which 
they led Paul into the court having jurisdiction 
over crimes against the national religion, was at 
once modified and imbittered by a play ful curi- 
osity, while only in a few royal hearts was there 



Paul's message to the Athenians. 153 

a sincere religious interest. Surrounded, as he 
was, by evidences of the decadence of the city, 
and the azoic, helpless nature of their religion, 
he might reply to their jests, now, with a more 
bitter irony than that which Socrates had hurled 
at their fathers, on this same Mars Hill, ages 
ago. But Paul had sober business to perform. 
He had a wonderfully tender and loving mes- 
sage of hope for this people, direct from the 
" G-od Unknown," whom they ignorantly wor- 
shipped. 

Epimenides, "the Purifier," is said to have 
turned out a number of black and white sheep 
on the Areopagus, and commanded the Athe- 
nians to build altars to the appropriate local 
deities, wherever the animals lay down. The 
inscription quoted by Paul may have been from 
one of these altars ; it may have been from the 
altar of a " deity" whose name had been for- 
gotten ; or, again, it may have been from one of 
those altars supernumerary to the existence of 
which Pausanias and others have testified. But 
whatever the original occasion of the erection of 
this altar, the selection of the inscription as a 
text was too happy to be attributed to chance. 
It touched that sense of the need of a divine reve- 
lation which is universal, and which made the 
Athenians feel that, among their thirty thous- 
and gods, not one of them realized their idea of 
God. Beginning, therefore, with the conciliatory 



154 Paul's message to the Athenians. 

admission that the assembled Athenians were 
already " somewhat religions," Panl proceeds 
to the unfolding of the two great thoughts of 
his discourse : (1) God as a personal Creator and 
a universal Father ; and (2) Christ as the only 
saving Revelation. And if it remained to prove 
that Paul was inspired, it were enough to recall 
that, amid all the quibbles and quillets of Juda- 
ism, and all the jargon of philosophies, and all 
the dirt and debris of a shattered Paganism, ho 
held fast to these truths in all their grand pro- 
portions. And nowhere else do they stand out 
so luminously and sublimely as in this sermon 
on Mars Hill. Here were the Stoics, to whom 
matter was an eternal entity, and God an abstrac- 
tion ; the Epicurians, who maintained that the 
highest good was pleasure, and that the universe 
had resulted from a chance combination of 
atoms ; and the polytheistic multitudes, who 
still believed that there really was some efficacy 
in the incense of the thousand altars which 
wreathed those classic hills, and who believed 
that the inimitable temple of their national 
goddess, on the Acropolis, yonder, was really a 
divine dwelling-place. Indeed, there were men 
of all schools gathered there, men of all faiths, 
and men of no faith ; but they were all a unit 
in that national exclusiveness which called 
strangers barbarians, and in that agnosticism 
which reckoned the dissolution of the body as 



paul's message to the Athenians. 155 

the end of human destiny. But Paul, in this 
wonderful discourse, had a corrective for all 
errors, a revelation for all hearts. He taught 
the people a true theology — that God, the One, 
the only God, "dwelleth not in temples made 
with hands," and that "the Godhead is not like 
unto gold, or silver, or ivory, or bronze, or mar- 
ble, however much or skilfully it may be graven 
by art or man's device." He taught the Epicu- 
rians the true Cosmogony — that " God made the 
world and all things therein;" and the true 
ethical principle — that true pleasure is the con- 
sciousness of seeking the highest good, which 
is God. He taught the Stoics the doctrine of 
Providence — that "he is not far off from every 
one of us, for in him we live and move and have 
our being." And then, to reconcile these reve- 
lations to their proud hearts, and to impress 
upon them, especially, the common fatherhood 
of God and the universal brotherhood of man, 
he reminds them that one of their own poets 
has suggested these truths, imputing to their 
own Jupiter the nature of this true God : 

" For we his offspring are ; and he. in love, 
Points out to man his labor from above." 

But grand as is the reach and compass of this 
declaration of the nature of God, the climax of 
Paul's sermon was reserved for the purpose of 
bringing to the hearts of these Athenians the 



156 Paul's message to the athejsta^s. 

Gospel of Christ. It was not necessary that he 
should name the Master in this public discourse. 
He had already preached " Jesus and the Resur- 
rection," in the market-place ; and when the 
great preacher referred to "the man whom He 
hath ordained," they well understood whom he 
signified. Indeed, he had but one theme, and 
that was Jesus. And who shall analyze Paul's 
preaching when once he comes to his Theme I 
There is such a grand unity in his discourse, 
such a concentration of mental and spiritual en- 
ergy upon the central thought, that there is no 
standard by which it can be measured : grander 
for its towering simplicity than even the Acrop- 
olis under which he stood. ISTo, you cannot 
classify Paul's preaching. It cannot be called 
either topical or textual ; in its development, his 
sermon is neither expository nor allegorical, 
neither illustrative nor argumentative ; and yet, 
if we had any terminology by which to measure 
and express its upreaching and outreaching pro- 
portions, it might be found to possess, in a sur- 
passing sense, all these characteristics. But 
Paul's preaching was simply the unfolding of a 
personality. It was simply presenting Christ. 
It was proclaiming Jesus. And it was this 
wonderful unity and simplicity of theme that 
made Paul's ministry at Athens ultimately suc- 
cessful. An abstract truth is not the germ of 
faith. But the truth embodied in a living and 



PAUL'S MESSAGE TO THE ATHENIANS. 157 

loving Saviour, though falling from the lips of 
the lonely and despised apostle, to whom Athens 
was but a noisy solitude, and finding lodgment 
in only a few rare, believing hearts — that Truth, 
even for Athens, was the sure prophecy of a 
Christian future. 



A CHILD'S MORNING PRAYER. 



I BRING-, Lord, my gift of praise 
To Thee, whose care has filled the night ; 
Keep me this day, in wisdom's ways, 
And make me firm to do the right. 

May kindness guard my hours of mirth j 

My heart rejoice at duty's call j 
Thy will be done, throughout the earth, 

God, my hope, my life, my all ! 



(158) 



Life-words to a Dying 
World. 



A SERMON. 



" The woeds that i speak unto you, they are spirit and 
they are life." — John vi. 63. 

IN" ancient Babylonia and Egypt, if not in all 
Oriental lands, the greatest cities were the 
outgrowth of pagan worship, often beginning 
in the single act of a king. The royal worship- 
er, in return for some favor snppositively divine, 
bnilded an altar to the local deity ; and aronnd 
that consecrated monument, because of its relig- 
ious charm, arose the habitations of the people. 
In all ancient societies, indeed, the first recog- 
nized necessity was religion ; and the place of 
worship, whether marked by a rude stone-henge 
or a magnificent temple, became at once the 
social magnet toward which all interests were 
drawn and in which all activities centered. The 
pagans looked upon their temples as the literal 
dwelling-places of divinity, and thought that 
to abide within the shadow of those temples was 
to commit themselves to the immediate care of 

(159) 



160 LIFE-WOKDS TO A DYING WOELD. 

Providence. Under the patronage of religious 
zeal, therefore, the religious metropolis soon be- 
came also the commercial and political capital. 
Thus Memphis, around whose splendid masonry 
arose the pyramids, gathered its first importance 
from the shrine of Ptah. The architectural 
glory of Thebes was the ultimate outgrowth of 
the worship of Ammon. Babylon itself was 
simply a nation's tribute to a national deity. 
The famous old city of Ur grew up out of the 
worship of the moon-god of that name. The 
thrifty commerce of Ephesns was largely de- 
rived from the cultus of Diana. And even Jeru- 
salem itself, we may presume, would never have 
been the mighty reality it was and the everlast- 
ing remembrance it has become, without the 
temple of Solomon there dedicated to the one 
true God. 

But if the social world of three thousand years 
ago was tributary to the fragmentary and ma- 
terialistic religions of that age, how much more 
essentially should the modern world be tribu- 
tary to the Kingdom of Christ as planted in the 
human heart. The ancient world reared great 
cities around temples made with hands, but the 
religion of Christ is a spiritual empire, having 
its stronghold in human nature, and extending 
its sway, silently and omnipotently as the sun- 
light, through all the avenues and fountains of 
human activity. Christianity enthrones the 



LIFE-WOEDS TO A DYING WOELD. 161 

Conscience above the codes. Christianity is a 
principle even more than a creed ; a force rather 
than a form ; love, and life, and spirit, even 
more than law. Christianity is something more 
than a system of divine jurisprudence. Chris- 
tianity, in a word, gives the people a Saviour as 
well as a law-giver, governing from within by 
regeneration rather than from without by legal 
restraint, and entrenching itself in the faith- 
faculty, that great deep of the soul which 
reaches far above, beneath and beyond the sen- 
sibilities and faculties of the natural man, wel- 
coming the wisdom of God and the hope of 
immortality. 

"The words that I speak unto you," said 
Jesus, " they are spirit and they are life." 

Now these words of the Saviour are associated 
with an occasion very well understood, being an 
explanation of that figure of speech so far be- 
yond the comprehension of his times: " My 
flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink in- 
deed." But we may accept the words of the 
text as affording a universal principle of inter- 
pretation, and as a standard by which we may 
always distinguish the genuine Christianity, 
whether manifest in individual lives, churches, 
or creeds. 

In the first place, beloved Christians, these 
words distinguish Christianity from all other 
systems and Christ from all other masters. It 
11 



162 LIFE-WOEDS TO A DYING WOELD. 

has been said by the adversaries that the moral 
precepts of the Gospel are only a reproduction 
of older systems of faith ; that Jesus himself 
only repeated the rules of conduct already pro- 
mulgated by Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha or 
Hillel. The real distinction to be made between 
systems of religion, however, is found in the 
matter of their religious vitality, their power to 
inspire, quicken and regenerate a human soul, 
their ability to make the soul a well of goodness 
rather than a fountain of evil. In a word, the 
measure of the value of a system of religion is 
the portion of the God-life which is refluent in 
its laws and principles. And therefore while 
other masters, with other creeds, have been 
wonderfully helpful to the world in its spiritual 
development toward that fulness of the time 
when God was to send forth His Son into the 
world, they were, nevertheless, only schoolmas- 
ters appointed of God to bring the nations to 
Christ ; and their narrow homilies, their crude 
laws, their fragmentary systems, were super- 
ceded by Him in whom dwelleth all the fulness 
of the Godhead bodily. 

Contrast for a moment the words of these 
masters with the words of Jesus. Confucius 
said: "Man is greater than any system of 
thought." Jesus said: "Blessed are the pure 
in heart, for they shall see God." We are im- 
pressed at once with the vital, equal truthfulness 



LIFE-WOEDS TO A DYING WOELD. 163 

of these sayings, but the conviction is just as 
irresistible that the first dictum is human truth, 
the other divine truth ; that Confucius gives 
utterance to philosophy alone, while Jesus gives 
utterance to Revelation. Buddha said: "Re- 
flection is the path of immortality, thoughtless- 
ness is the way of death." " He that believe th 
on the Son of God hath everlasting life," said 
Jesus, " and I will raise him up at the last day." 
How beautifully true is the saying of Buddha, 
speaking from the tribunal of Nature ! How 
helpfully, hopefully, savingly true, are the 
words of Jesus, spoken from the throne of the 
omnipotent King ! 

The golden rule was foreshadowed in the 
words of Hill el when he enjoined : " Do not do 
unto others what you should not like done unto 
yourself. This is the whole law." " But it was 
reserved for Jesus," as one has said, "to an- 
nounce our duty to man in its subordination to 
our duty toward God. With Him the love of 
universal humanity has its deep religious 
ground in the love of God, whom we are to resem- 
ble. c The love of man, He tells us, is the 
second great commandment, not the first ; it is 
the moon shining by the light borrowed from 
that sun.' " And so Jesus said, speaking there- 
in as never man spake: "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy 
mind, and with all thy strength. This is the 



164 LIFE-WOKDS TO A DYING WOULD. 

first commandment ; and the second is like unto 
it, namely, ' Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself.' Upon these two commandments hang 
all the law and the prophets." 

Or turn to a representative scene in the life of 
one of the greatest of these earthly masters. 
Take that parable about Buddha and Kisagota- 
mi, so philosophically told by Max Midler and 
so affectionately beautified by Arnold in " The 
Light of Asia." The young mother, Kisagota- 
mi, had lost her boy, her only child, and, con- 
fused by her great sorrow, went about from 
house to house bearing the lifeless form of the 
boy upon her bosom, asking with bitter lamen- 
tations, if there was no remedy. "Alas! Kisa- 
gotami does not understand the law of death," 
said one of the wise men, " I must comfort her." 
And so, with expressions of fatherly tenderness, 
he sent her to Buddha, the great teacher ; to 
whom, when she had found him, she did homage, 
and said : "Lord and master, do you know any 
medicine that will be good for my boy?" "I 
know of some," replied Buddha; "bring me 
only a handful of mustard seed, which I require, 
however, to be brought from a house wherein no 
husband, parent, child or slave has ever died." 
And so she clasped her dead boy to her aching 
heart once more, and went up and down among 
the houses of the people. But ever when she 
withheld her hand from the proffered mustard 



LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 165 

seed to inquire, " In my friend's house has there 
died a husband, a son, a parent or a slave \ ' ' the 
reply came back like the echo of her own sor- 
row, "Lady, what is this that you say ; do you 
not know that the living are few, but the dead 
are many?'' Leaving the child in the forest, 
therefore, she hurried to Buddha again ; but he 
simply repeated the lamentations of the people, 
and said: "You thought that you alone had 
lost a son. The living indeed are few, but the 
dead are many. G-o and bury thy child." 

The broken-hearted mother was disciplined, 
indeed, but she was not comforted ; she had dis- 
covered the law of death, but she had found no 
Gospel of life. Just cover that incident over for 
a moment, beloved Christians, with a cor- 
responding scene in the life of Jesus, which 
needs no philosophy to make it profound, 
nor poetry to make it beautiful. "And it 
came to pass the day after that He went 
into a city called Nain ; and many of His dis- 
ciples went with Him, and much people. 
Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, 
behold, there was a dead man carried out, the 
only son of his mother, and she was a widow : 
and much people of the city were with her. 
And when the Lord saw her He had compassion 
on her, and said unto her, 'Weep not.' And 
He came nigh and touched the bier: and the 
bearers stood still. And He said, ' Young man, 



166 LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WOKLD. 

I say unto thee, arise.' And he that was dead 
sat up and began to speak. And He gave him 
to his mother." 

That is the contrast, beloved Christians. The 
words of Buddha simply provided a little hu- 
man philosophy with which to seal the gate of 
the tomb ; the words of Jesus restored the lost 
child to his mother. The Buddhist scene may 
comprehend "the beautiful, the tender, the hu- 
manly true ; ' ' but the Messianic scene compre- 
hends the hopeful, the remedial, the divinely 
true. And the words of Buddha go out with 
the surrounding ignorance, before the words of 
Jesus, just as the stars go out along with the 
darkness, before the rising of the sun. 

You may see one in the public gathering or 
in the crowded street whose face bears a strik- 
ing resemblance to that of some great hero ; 
having, perhaps, the bold, benevolent lines that 
furrowed and individualized the face of Lincoln, 
or the austere, military saintliness of the face of 
Cromwell. Bat put a national crisis upon the 
soul of the man who looks like Lincoln, and give 
the sword of liberty into the hand of the one who 
resembles Cromwell, and all the resemblance will 
disappear. What constitutes the difference % 
Opportunity, one will say, or purpose, or else, 
that man in the crowd comes short in what is 
mysteriously called genius. 

But the difference, whatever name you give it, 



LIFE- WORDS TO A DYING WOELD. 167 

is really hidden away in the treasuries of the 
soul. It is a spiritual divergence, comprehend- 
ing kind as well as degree, and in which all 
mere outward resemblances entirely disappear. 
The superiority of Christianity over other sys- 
tems is, in like manner, precisely that of the 
spiritual over the physical. 

In a gallery of paintings you are attracted by 
one which displays the genius of domesticity, one 
which must have been conceived and executed 
by an artist whose soul is musical with the love 
of home. It may have only a plain farm-house 
for its central-figure, but the artist has infused 
so much natural warmth into the work, withal, 
as to make you feel that you could go straight 
up to such a house, though a stranger, and find 
welcome there ; while the fruit-laden orchard, 
the ripening harvest, the flowing stream, with 
the background of hill, and forest, and evening 
skies, only completes the garb of that mysteri- 
ous, unspeakable something which the heart 
interprets as an earnest of hospitality. " How 
like nature it is!" you exclaim. But wait 
before the picture until weariness and hunger 
come, whereupon all that likeness to reality will 
disappear. Then you must have genuine repose, 
and not the fanciful jjromise of it ; real bread, 
and not the mere dream of it. You cannot sub- 
sist on works of art. That illustrates in one di- 
rection the difference between the words of 



168 LIFE-WOKDS TO A DYING WOKLD. 

Christ and those of other masters, the supe- 
riority of Christianity over other systems being 
simply the superiority of. life over form and 
color. 

On the sea- shore, after a night of storm, one 
looks ont through the revealing twilight and 
sees a man clinging to the wreck of a ship, which 
has been broken in pieces by the mighty sea. 
How shall the storm-tossed one be saved? Phi- 
losophy alone will hardly accomplish it, nor any 
amount of speculative theology. One may put 
out from the shore and drop a sounding-line 
here and there, to determine how deep the man's 
grave will be if he is not rescued. Another may 
approach the situation with a speculative mind, 
and weigh the probabilities for and against the 
saving of the man. Still another may eulogize 
the man's character, and endeavor to impress 
upon the spectators the great loss the com- 
munity would suffer in the death of such a man. 
Others may occu}3y themselves with criticising 
the ill-fated vessel, declaring it unseaworthy, 
and indicating wherein it was defective accord- 
ing to nautical principles. But all that offers 
no solution of the real problem. The crisis 
wants action, spirit, life ; wants theory con- 
verted into practice, intelligence quickened 
into force. And the one who bravely proceeds 
to surmount the difficulties and dangers of the 
situation, without waiting to analyze or classify 



LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 109 

them ; who, pushing out into the troubled sea, 
reaches and saves the man, he is the hero of the 
hour. And so Christ came out upon the sea of 
life to surmount those difficulties and to solve 
those problems about which the world had hith- 
erto only found the wisdom to speculate and the 
power to philosophize ; and the difference be- 
tween other masters and Jesus is just the differ- 
ence between a philosopher and a Saviour. 

And thus Jesus presents himself to the ad- 
vancing world to-day, speaking as never man 
spake, the one Saviour among all these masters, 
the one tower of refuge among all the citadels 
of faith ; and looking round about upon all 
human oracles and all human teachers, He may 
justly say, as He said of old: "All that ever 
came before me were thieves and robbers. But 
the sheep did not hear them. I am the good 
shepherd : the good shepherd giveth his life for 
the sheep. . . . And other sheep I have 
which are not of this fold, them also must I 
bring, and there shall be one fold and one 
shepherd." 

And these earthly masters, if we open our 
eyes to the things which are spiritually dis- 
cerned, may now be seen laying their crowns at 
the feet of Christ, surrendering their temporary 
commissions to Him, their hearts confessing the 
sentiment of a humble song : 



170 LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 

" Out little systems have their day ; 
They have their day and cease to be : 
They are hut broken lights of Thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

These words also distinguish Christianity as 
the highest revelation of the righteousness of 
God, comprehending the substance, instead of 
the mere symbols of religion, and the law of 
love instead of the law of requital. The cere- 
monial law told men what they were not to do in 
the social relations ; the Gospel prescribes aline 
of positive duty. The law restrained men from 
specific sins ; the Gospel constrains the heart to 
the love of righteousness. The law was the 
world's task-master, the Gospel is the world's 
liberator. 

And so the law took up this matter of human 
life in detail, dividing and sub -dividing the 
circle of affairs, and writing special enactments 
and prohibitions on every quadrant. One quad- 
rant of this circle of law was occupied with com- 
mandments intended to throw a protection about 
the rights of property : " Thou shalt not steal ; 
thou shalt not covet.' ' Another quadrant guard- 
ed the sanctity of the home : "Thou shalt not 
commit adultery ; honor thy father and thy 
mother. ' ' Another quadrant affirmed the sacred- 
ness of life: "Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt 
not bear false witness." Still another division 
x)f the circle asserted the claim of God upon the 



LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 171 

heart : "Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, 
and Him only shalt thou serve." But when 
Jesus came, with the wondrous sweep of his 
divine thought of life, He drew a circumference 
around the whole aggregate of human activities ; 
and high over this one empire of life He en- 
throned the one principle of love, saying, " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, 
and thy neighbor as thyself." And so this one 
circumference of love comprised all the seg- 
ments and diameters and quadrants of the law; 
for He knew that if this broad, universal princi- 
ple of love were planted in the souls of men, 
there would be no more violation of the rights 
of property, no desecration of the home, no tres- 
pass upon the sacredness of life, and no breach 
of the claims of God upon the heart. "The 
words that I speak unto you, they are not mere 
fragments of law, they are not the homilies of a 
day, they are not specific, negative, literal, or 
physical ; they are spirit and they are life." 

Again, the words of the text distinguish the 
true law of interpretation, and this whether we 
speak of the Bible itself, of religious history, or 
of the ways of Providence in our own lives. If 
we find disputed or obscure passages in the 
Word of God, or hard, indigestible ones ; if the 
finger-marks of the mere creed-seeker sometimes 
appear upon the sacred volume ; if the crucible 



172 LIFE- WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 

of Providence ever seems more than we can 
bear; there is for ns, beloved Christians, one 
great, fundamental principle of interpretation, 
one which will reveal to ns, in all these ocean cav- 
erns of the will of God, pearls of joy in vessels of 
wisdom. We have only to remember that the 
words of Jesns are spirit, and are life : and that 
all the oracles of God, all the visitations of 
Providence, the veiled angels that come to ns in 
the garb of bereavement, suffering, persecution, 
the ice-floes of doubt that sweep in upon us just 
when the struggle is most critical and the heart 
most despondent ; somehow, beloved Christians, 
as shall be manifest in the divine Afterward, 
these things too are spirit, and are life. 

And this standard of interpretation is the key 
to all Christian history from fche days of the 
Incarnation until now. Every grotesque super- 
stition, every vain heresy, every persecution for 
opinion's sake, has grown out of blindness or 
indifference to this scriptural law. The refor- 
mations, on the contrary, the revolutionary 
changes that have made for social and national 
progress, and all measures of emancipation, 
have had their beginning in a happy return to 
this principle of interpretation. 

The interpretation of miracles will be very 
much aided also by the proper application of 
the Saviour's rule. So often asserted and so 
feebly disputed, the sentiment has grown into a 



LIFE- WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 173 

settled conviction that the time of miracles and 
of special providences passed away with the 
initiatory period of Christian history. In the 
light of this scriptnre, however, we may learn 
that physical miracles have only given way to 
those that are spiritual, and spiritually dis- 
cerned. If we are still carnal and political in 
our views of the Kingdom of Christ, like the 
old Jews ; if we still require signs and symbols, 
or selfishly want a Messiah for nothing more 
than to break down literal prison-gates, like 
John the Baptist ; then to us the age of mir- 
acles is ended indeed. The Master is not here to 
heal outwardly the impotent multitudes to-day, 
nor silencing troubled waters with audible voice. 
But is human intercourse to come to an end be- 
cause men have made the lightning their news- 
bearer, substituting the invisible telegraph for 
the ancient messenger % So Christ is all the more 
helpfully present, He is omnipotently present in 
the operation of invisible forces, in the person 
of the omnipresent Spirit, doing greater miracles 
than in His earthly ministry. His very words, 
which are spirit and life, are themselves miracle- 
workers. What healings, what purgings, what 
transformations they have wrought, since first 
they began to go about doing good ! What 
have we, indeed, of all the elements of civiliza- 
tion, of all the privileges of Christian com- 
munion, which, contrasted with the ruins of 



174 LIFE-WOKDS TO A DYING WOELD. 

history and the spiritual poverty of paganism, 
does not evidence a living, immanent, miracle- 
working Saviour ? Are not our Christian homes 
miracles of peace, our Christian laws miracles 
of justice, our Christian governments miracles of 
clemency, our Christian institutions miracles of 
liberty, our Christian philosophies miracles of 
wisdom, our Christian churches miracles of 
grace ? And the greatest of all is the miracle of 
regeneration. It was a wonderful miracle that 
Jesus performed when He wakened the maid of 
Capernaum out of the subtle sleep of death. 
But how immeasurably greater was that spirit- 
ual miracle performed upon Mary Magdalene ; 
or that performed in the case of the sinful 
woman who came to Him out of the city, bearing 
an alabaster box of ointment, her heart full of 
yearning, repentant love, and of whom He said, 
the balm of heavenly compassion in the words : 
"Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, be- 
cause she loved much." And those who stood 
by, recognizing the forgiveness of sins as a 
greater miracle than any wrought upon the 
body, exclaimed: " Who is this that forgiveth 
sins also?" If therefore we are deprived of 
that visible Saviour, for whom the impotent 
multitudes waited, not in vain, on the shores of 
Galilee, we can rejoice in the spiritual presence 
of the glorified Saviour, who hath power on 
earth to forgive sins. The miracle which plants 



LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 175 

the red rose of health in the face of a loved one, 



may be mysteriously withheld from us, but the 
miracle which plants the white rose of eternal 
life in the depths of the soul is far better. "The 
words that I speak unto you, they are not ser- 
vants of the flesh, as if the Son of Man had but 
come into the world to gratify earthly desires, 
rather than the heavenly ; the words that I 
speak unto you have their supreme purpose in 
something beyond that which to-day is and to- 
morrow is cast into the oven ; these words that I 
speak unto you, they are spirit and they are 
life." 

And this principle, we may say finally, distin- 
guishes the genuine Christian character from 
the spurious. Even the adversaries of the Chris- 
tian church should scarcely fail to profit by this 
trustworthy criterion of religious life. They 
have been wont to point to the hypocrite as an 
unfailing practical argument against Christian- 
ity, disdaining to discriminate between false 
and true, between the vital and the professional; 
and yet the unbelieving world has never been so 
unguarded for a moment as to apply this argu- 
ment against the secular interests of men. Be- 
cause a counterfeit dollar is discovered, shall the 
Government mint be destroyed % Because a 
sailor falls overboard, shall the vessel be de- 
serted ? Because there is a crooked beam or an 
angular wall in the dwelling-house, shall the 



176 LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 

family move out into the storm % No ; however 
eccentric the logic of the unbeliever may be in 
relation to the Church, it always straightens np 
and out into good, wholesome common sense 
when applied to worldly affairs. "Reform 
abuses," he will say, "punish crimes, and en- 
courage progress, but you must have discrimi- 
nating wisdom, and let the business go on." 
"The words that I speak unto you," says the 
Author of our faith, " they are spirit, and they 
are life." That is the divine trade-mark upon 
this business of serving God : and the meaning- 
ful, genuine Christianity is the spirit and life of 
the words of Jesus practically manifesting 
themselves in human character. 

This thought ought to lead, also, to a good 
degree of self-examination on the part of Chris- 
tians. Our religion must signify to the world 
something more and deeper than the peculiar 
tenets of a sect, or the verbal professions of 
the public service, or the display of gifts with- 
out charity. 

Here in your garden you plant two flowers. 
Bestowing upon them equal care, you look upon 
them as having equal promise. But wiien the 
April showers have come, and the May sunshine, 
you come to look upon them again, and find one 
of them wearing a crown of beauty, while the 
other is dead as an autumn leaf on a bed of 
snow. What explains the difference % One had 



LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 177 

the spirit and the life within it, and the force to 
take hold npon and absorb the elements of 
growth in earth and atmosphere. The other 
was only a paper flower, substituted by some 
evil hand for the one in which your hopes were 
centered, and the very same agencies which 
beautified the real, and demonstrated it, ex- 
posed the spurious and snatched away its 
momentary crown. 

Well, there are multitudes, now as always, 
it is to be feared, who are enacting a kind of 
aesthetic Christianity, having turned from the 
true to the beautiful, or having been deceived 
by the Adversary into mistaking color for life, 
and form for substance. And while they may 
be apparently faultless, their characters out- 
wardly beautiful as painted ships upon a 
painted sea, they are such as come sadly short 
of this criterion of the faith. Heaven is not 
an exhibition of art. It is rather the great 
harvest grown from the words which are spirit 
and life, upon the good ground of a living 
faith, and nourished by sturdy moral princi- 
ples, such principles being enlightened and 
confirmed in the righteousness of God. Oh 
that the Creator would breathe upon us all, 
upon all the churches, upon whatsoever is 
called Christian, the spiritually creative act of 
regeneration, melting away the ice-palaces of 

12 



178 LIFE-WORDS TO A DYING WORLD. 

formalism, the wax-figures of hypocrisy, and 
all the frost-work of doubt, until it may be 
said of the works of the disciples, as of the 
words of the Master, "They are spirit and they 
are life." 



Easter Song. 



THE lily kissed the April sun, 
When wintry winds were passing by : 
The robes of white the lily won 
A world of roses prophesy. 

So Christ, the Lily of the Vale, 

A love-light found in Joseph's tomb ; 

Death passed in vain, with snowy gale, 
To blight the Rose of Sharon's bloom. 

The dead in Christ are lilies fair, 

All kept of God, where faith can see. 
The glorified in Christ shall wear 
The rose of immortality. 



(179) 



Religion at the Door of 
the Public Schools. 



SOME three hundred years ago, when the 
city of Leyden emerged from the turmoil 
of war and initiated the era of peace, by estab- 
lishing a university, there was a grand inaugu- 
ral procession, at the head of which rode a 
beautiful woman, symbolizing the Holy Gos- 
pel, other allegorical figures following after, 
emblematic of law, medicine and the liberal arts. 
We do not now inaugurate educational schemes 
in a manner so demonstrative. We think we 
have exchanged the spectacular for the substan- 
tial. But if we were required to symbolize 
the educational systems of to-day, the order of 
allegorical procession should have to express a 
considerable modification of the festival at Ley- 
den, the relative importance of the secular fig- 
ures and the religious emblems being reversed, 
while the Holy Gospel itself, if not mustered 
entirely out of the scene, would have to debouch 
into the by-ways. For, the figure aside and the 
hard facts before us, the secular is constantly 

(180) 



RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 181 

encroaching upon the religions in onr systems of 
public instruction. In our prejudice against 
dogma, we are encouraging doubt. In our de- 
termination that religious training shall not be 
exclusively of Paul, or of Apollos, or of Peter, 
we have excluded Christ himself. In our fear 
of Rome, we are admitting Sodom and Gomorrah. 
In pre-historic times, education was perhaps 
altogether physical, developing into nothing 
higher than domestic training for domestic 
duties. The child learned obedience to the 
parental will, and subservience to the parental 
interests. And even when, by the evolution of 
the family, the tribe, the community, and the 
nation had come into existence, education gen- 
erally contemplated only a functional training 
for immediate ends, inculcating habits of indus- 
try and frugality, or familiarity with the arts of 
war. And long after the importance of intel- 
lectual pursuits had been proclaimed by the 
masters, if not recognized by the people, the 
nations continued, out of a spirit of self- 
aggrandisement, to employ the intellect of the 
citizen as the blind servant of the body-politic. 
Sparta never thought of mental training, beyond 
what would subserve the supreme object of 
making good soldiers of the boys, and sturdy 
mothers of the girls. The first schools which 
contemplated the training of the mind, for its 
own sake, and the pursuit of knowledge as an 



182 RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

element of good, were taught by the priests. 
The schools of Judea, always, and those of 
Egypt, after the schools of the estates had 
been outgrown, were purely ecclesiastical. In 
Greece, however, education was as purely secu- 
lar ; while it was Rome, rather than his own 
country, which adopted or anticipated Plato's 
theory, that all education should be committed 
to the State. Egypt, therefore, educated with 
special reference to her pagan priesthood, 
Greece, with reference to the complex services 
of society in general, the supreme purpose of 
Home being to develop citizens. 

In the apostolic age, Christianity was Chris- 
tian eschatology alone, so far as doctrine was 
related to practical life, and the indifference of 
the early Christians to intellectual training is not 
to be attributed to any prejudice against learn- 
ing, but to their expectation of the end of all 
things in the imminent coming of Christ. And 
the spiritual expectation perhaps justified the 
secular indifference. There were indeed certain 
Christian teachers, throughout all the first cen- 
turies of the Church, who confounded ignorance 
with simplicity, and thought knowledge hazard- 
ous to piety. But the opposition of the Church 
to the schools was seldom more than the inci- 
dental kind explained by the extreme poverty 
of the early disciples, their intense pre-occupa- 
tion with spiritual things, or by the provocation 



EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 183 

of adverse edicts and proclamations ostensibly 
in the interests of education ; as those of Julian, 
who, "in terms of bitter sarcasm, forbade therf 
access to the public schools, their studying the 
Greek authors and sciences, and their practicing 
medicine." History has not revealed, but the 
philosophy of history may readily discern, how 
greatly this alienation of the body of men best 
able to foster education, contributed to hurry 
the approach and deepen the shadow of the 
dark ages. We only know that when educa- 
tional responsibility came to the Church with 
the reins of power, human learning was almost 
extinct ; while, in the mean time, the Church, 
partly from the growth of Episcopal bigotry, 
and partly from the necessity put upon her by 
the hostility of the civil power, had adopted the 
purely ecclesiastical mode of teaching. 

Howbeit, the schools of the monks were the 
stars of the dark ages ; and it was by their light 
alone that ancient learning found its way out to 
this modern world. When differentiation began 
again, however, it became apparent that while 
the ecclesiastical idea had been preserved open- 
ly, coming on down from Egypt, the secular 
idea had also an asylum somewhere, having 
come on down from Greece. Scholasticism 
adopted the one and Chivalry the other. In the 
monastery the idea of education was simply the 
old Egyptian idea Christianized, and there, be- 



184 KELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

tween labored homilies, long fastings and pain- 
ful prayers, the monks taught the seven arts : 
Dialectics, Grammar, Hhetoric, Music, Arithme- 
tic, Geometry and Astronomy. In the castle the 
idea of education was simply the old Greek idea, 
diluted with romance, however, as a substitute 
for ancient philosophy ; and there in the castle 
they taught the seven <k accomplishments: " 
To ride, to swim, to shoot, to box, to hawk, to 
play chess, and to write poetry. Here we have, 
in sharpest contrast, the two ideas, the monkish 
and the secular. And with all the efforts at 
compromise, notwithstanding the separate de- 
velopment and progress made from the two 
starting-points, this sharp distinction has been 
only too well preserved to the present time. 
Heroic efforts, efforts worthy of the grand object 
in view, have been made by Sturm, Erasmus, 
the " Brethren of the Common Life," and many 
others, to bring about a system of education 
which should " train all that are born men to all 
which is human." The University has_claimed 
the honor, and partly justified the claim, of 
having united all that was best in Scholasti- 
cism and Chivalry. And it may well be in the 
University that the nuptials of the secular 
and the religious ideas of education shall 
yet be celebrated. But while we look and 
labor toward the ideal, the disagreeable reality 
is, that the schools of to-day, with few ex- 



RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 185 

ceptions or qualifications, are either monkish 
or pagan. 

The trend of popular education may be fairly- 
indicated by three things, namely, the philoso- 
phy of education, the literature of the public 
schools, and the laws which relate to education. 

Now in the philosophy of education, whether 
we speak of those theories directly bearing up- 
on the practice of pedagogics, or of those prin- 
ciples which take their place in systems of gen- 
eral philosophy, or yet of those valuable princi- 
ples often hidden in general literature, there 
would seem to be little retrogression, if as little 
progress, on the subject of moral training. If 
neither the sacrificial devotedness of Groote, nor 
the comprehensiveness of Ratke, nor the natu- 
ralness of Comenius, nor the intensity of Pesta- 
lozzi, nor the elegance of Sturm, nor the spiritu- 
ality of Francke, nor the intellectual democracy 
of Jacotet, nor the manliness of Eichter, is repro- 
duced in any one system, or promulgated by any 
single teacher, these fragmentary, rectilinear 
principles have now become the heritage of all, 
and a philosophical average is so widely distri- 
buted as to bring the science of pedagogics more 
nearly to a practical platform, and yet to a 
higher platform, than it has ever occupied be- 
fore. In the realm of pure philosophy, however, 
this view applies only qualifiedly ; while the 
otherwise admirable treatise of Herbert Spencer, 



186 EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

is, on the line of religious instruction, a lamen- 
table exception. The great service this philos- 
opher has rendered the cause of education, even 
on the threshold of the religious field, is, to be 
sure, only matter for grateful recognition. His 
protest against artificial punishment, his appeal 
to the law of sequence in moral conduct, his 
plea for the evolution of will-power, for self- 
government instead of force-government, his 
clear discrimination between evil knowledge and 
evil impulse in the nature of the child, his keen 
discernment of the fact that education is condi- 
tioned by heredity, — in all these things Mr. 
Spencer leads out in a line parallel with the 
most enlightened Christian sentiment. But in 
his anxiety not to carry his system of education 
beyond the exclusively moral, he has stopped 
short of the comprehensively moral. And this 
shrinking from the religious element in educa- 
tion, even when he found himself standing at the 
open door leading only to that, is illustrated in 
Mr. Spencer's manner of quoting from Klchter. 
Bichter has left the world, as all the world 
knows, a great heritage of educational philoso- 
phy in his quaint, profound Levana. And when 
Richter speaks of religion in education, he 
speaks religiously ; when he dwells upon the 
subject of moral training, he is evidently 
prompted by genuine ethical impulse. "It is 
true," he says, "that religiousness, in its 



RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 187 

highest degree, is identical with morality, and 
this with that ; but that equally pertains to the 
highest degree of every power ; and every sun 
wanders only through the heavenly ether. All 
that is divine must as certainly meet and unite 
with morality, as science and art, so that in 
every soul rescued from sin there must as cer- 
tainly be religious Tabors as there are hills in 
the crater of iEtna. . . . When that which 
is mighty appears in nature — storm, thunder, 
the starry firmament, death— then utter the 
word God before the child. A great misfor- 
tune, a great blessing, a great crime, a noble 
action, are building-sites for a child's chnrch. 
Show everywhere to the child, as well as on the 
borders of the holy land of religion, devotional 
and holy sentiments. . . . Where religion 
is, there both men and beasts, and the whole 
world, are loved. Every being is a moving tem- 
ple of the Infinite. Everything earthly purifies 
and suns itself in the thought of Him. . . . 
So let every poetic ideal shine free and bright 
before the child: his eye will not thereby be 
blinded to the two greater ideals, to that which 
his own conscience commands him to be, and to 
the idea of God." 

These are analects from Jean Paul, such as 
indicate the worthy, fundamental place he as- 
signed to religion in his philosophy of educa- 
tion. But Mr. Spencer, having proposed to 



188 EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

himself to incorporate nothing more than a com- 
mercial morality into his system, has no use for 
all this Teutonic simplicity, and so he quotes, 
instead, those remarks, very qualifiedly rele- 
vant, about the vacillant nature of parental gov- 
ernment, wherein Bichter compares the wavering 
father to that harlequin who carried " orders" 
under one arm, and u counter-orders " under 
the other ; and the mother to that giant Bria- 
reus, who had a hundred arms, each bearing its 
bundle of papers to add to the conflict of au- 
thorities. Of course the quotation made was 
quite in keeping with a system which avowedly 
regards nothing higher than " those activities 
which are involved in the maintenance of proper 
social and political relations ;' ? but when a phi- 
losopher adopts words which their author has 
subordinated in his own system to the most in- 
tense religiousness, to a recognition of God so 
fundamental as to determine his entire philoso- 
phy, and transfers these subordinate words to a 
division of his own work which tacitly pro- 
claims them an expression of their author's view 
on moral training, he cuts a figure in literature 
as grotesque as that of Christina in art, when 
she trimmed off a world-renowned painting to 
make it fit that specific niche in the wall of her 
palace. 

However, Mr. Spencer declares that he is only 
concerned that his thoughts shall be accepted as 



BELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 189 

far as they go, and happily there are those 
whose thoughts on this line have momentum 
enough to carry them much farther. "The 
cause of higher education," says President 
Hyde, of Bowdoin, u is also the cause of true 
religion ; the true professor is likewise a proph- 
et of God, and they who give their money and 
their service to the furtherance of sound learn- 
ing are no less truly the priests and prophets of 
God, than those who directly support and ad- 
minister the institutions of religion. We are 
told, in the inspired word of God, that wisdom, 
the truth, the word, was with God from the 
beginning, and without the Word was nothing 
made that was made. So may religion, whereby 
man is related to God, and higher education, 
whereby man is related to the wisdom and 
rational expression of God in nature and histo- 
ry, be evermore united in holy bonds, and bring 
forth their beauteous offspring of peace and jus- 
tice and love and blessedness." 

President Hyde' s utterances may be accepted 
as faithfully representing the dominant senti- 
ment of the colleges. Superintendent E. E. 
White, LL.D., of Cincinnati, holding a posi- 
tion which more directly overlooks the Public 
Schools, speaks therefrom with equal positive- 
ness, as follows : — " It is to be specially noted 
that each of the natural incentives has, for its 
highest correlative, a religious motive. A desire 



190 KELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

for approbation has, for its religious correlative, 
a desire for GoW s approval ; a desire for activi- 
ty and power, the desire for the power of an 
endless life ; a desire for knowledge, the desire 
to Jcnow God and His will; the hope of future 
good, the hope of a blessed immortality / a sense 
of honor, the desire to honor one" s Creator ; a 
sense of duty, the sense of obligation to do God's 
will. It has been assumed in this discussion, 
that the right training of the will involves the 
use of the highest motives that can be made 

effective; and hence the most 

efficient training of the will, involves an appeal 
to the religious motives. And this inference is 
strongly supported by the fact that the religious 
motives quicken and energize all the lower mo- 
tives to which they are related. It is for this 
reason, among others, that they have been the 
mightiest of historical forces, and the mightiest 
forces in individual life. The religious motives 
are fibred in modern civilization and constitute 
the one authoritative element of the moral law." 
As a trustworthy oracle of the universities we 
can do no better than to recall the words of 
President D. G. G-ilman, of Johns Hopkins : — 
' : The American university will also be a place 
for the maintenance of religion, not, I hope, by 
forcing assent to formulas, or by exacting con- 
formity to appointed rites, but by recognizing, 
everywhere, the religious nature of man, consid- 



EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 191 

ered individually, and the religious basis of 
society into which Americans are born. Ac- 
knowledging the obligations which rest upon 
every educated man to act according to the 
dictates of his conscience, and so refraining 
from the use of fetters and fines, the university, 
in giving expression to the experiences of our 
race and in fulfilling the requirements of our 
times, may fearlessly speak out its defense of 
those great and controlling ideas, God, soul, 
immortality, which underlie all our forms of 
government, all our progress in education, all 
our practical ethics, all our social restraints, all 
our modern literature, all our hope for this life 
and the next. The managers of our universities 
will be cowardly as well as traitorous, if, hold- 
ing these ideas as fundamental, they hesitate to 
affirm and reiterate them, because a few gifted 
and influential people have drifted away from 
their moorings, floating upon the ocean without 
compass or rudder, and without the charts on 
which mankind has for centuries recorded its ex- 
perience. I would go even further and claim that 
the American universities should be more than 
theistic ; they may, and shonld be, avowedly 
Christian, not in a narrow or sectarian sense, 
but in the broad, open and inspiring sense of 

the Gospels." " As I believe that 

one truth is never in conflict with another truth, 
so I believe that the ethics of the New Testa- 



192 EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

ment will be accepted by the scientific as well as 
the religious faculties of men ; to the former, as 
law ; to the latter, as gospel." 

And sentiments pitched to this same high key 
might be quoted from authorities all along the 
line of Christian philosophy ; President Seeley, 
of Amherst, declaring that the state should pro- 
vide instruction in the Gospel for its own sake ; 
Prof. G. Stanley Hall, witnessing his belief that 
the Bible is being slowly re-revealed as man's 
great text-book in psychology ; President D. S. 
Stephens, of Adrian College, speaking before 
the Cleveland Congress of churches, — these and 
hosts of others are $ accord, in principle if not 
as to methods : while if any would appeal from 
the practical teachers of religion and of science 
to those who more exclusively cultivate philoso- 
phy or literature, let Carlyle or Mathew Arnold 
be heard ; or even Huxley, who declares that the 
religious feelings are the essential basis of con- 
duct. Many of these utterances have reference 
to religion in conjunction with higher education, 
but they fall from the lips of men who would 
not look upon education, nor upon religion, in 
any fragmentary way. The Public School, 
indeed, is the true correlative of the University. 
It presupposes that diversity of gifts to which 
the university is specifically adapted, appeals to 
the same ultimate principles in human nature, 
and with a view of life as comprehensive, is de- 






KELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 193 

signed to foster in each child all those possibili- 
ties as to a choice of occupation which the uni- 
versity undertakes to qualify as they develop. 
In a word, the public school has for its ideal the 
fitting of every child for any occupation, so far 
as a primary course of instruction can accom- 
plish it, while the university undertakes to fit 
any one for just the occupation he may have 
chosen. And it is in childhood, preeminently, 
that the universals of spiritual truth, such as the 
ideas of hope, faith, charity ; the right, the im- 
mortality of the soul, and of God, may be most 
successfully cultivated. For if these ideas are 
not moral intuitions, they are certainly more 
indigenous to the nature of the child, than to 
the mind of the adult. 

We find, then, that there is an abundance of 
good, wholesome teaching on this subject. Phi- 
losophy inclines preponderantly to the view that 
religious teaching is fundamental to education. 
The practical question as to whether it shall 
enter the door of the public schools, and be a 
part of the daily curriculum, or whether it 
should turn aside and run in a parallel, inde- 
pendent channel, on the parochial plan or its 
equivalent, naturally springs a division of the 
ranks. But the fact is hopefully clear that the 
prevalent philosophy of the day cannot, unless 
in a very qualified way, be held responsible for 
the secular tendency of public school education. 

13 



194 RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Turn, now, to the Literature of the Public 
Schools. 

" The school readers of former times," wrote 
Doctor A. A. Hodge, " as the Columbian Orator, 
published in Boston in 1797, the New England 
Reader, published in 1841, and the McGuffey 
Readers, so universally used in Ohio a generation 
ago, were full of extracts from the best Christian 
classics. These have been everywhere super- 
seded by readers embracing only secular non- 
religious matter." 

The eminent Doctor must have meant to 
comprehend in so sweeping a condemnation 
the tendencies as well as the consummated 
changes in the choice of school-books. The 
readers in actual use around us, howbeit, would 
seem to justify this condemnation only qnali- 
fiedly and by no means universally. I have 
examined quite thoroughly three series of 
readers, all published since 1S69, two of them 
being extensively used at the present writ- 
ing, the third very recently issued, and the ver- 
dict must be somewhat more favorable than the 
preconceived opinion with which I confess to 
have entered upon the task. If we take only 
those readers which are so decidedly Christian 
in their tone as to prove that they were chosen for 
that very reason, they bear no mean proportion 
to the whole number of selections. The fifth 
readers, the highest of the three series in consid* 



EELIGION IX THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 195 

eration, contain in the aggregate some four 
hundred selections. Of this number fully one- 
fourth are designed to propagate Christian truth, 
to inculcate Christian belief, the religious selec- 
tions being almost equally divided between the 
pathetic, the narrative and the didactic, supple- 
mented with fragments of fiction refluent with 
Christian sentiment and grounded in Christian 
ethics. And very many of the remaining select- 
ions are full of what may be called incidental 
Christianity, that unobtrusive yet profound 
recognition of Christian faith which is contained 
in the rarest of all the gems of Anglo-Saxon 
literature, and the prevalence of which Doctor 
Hodge happily explains when he reminds us that 
" the English language is the product of the 
thought, character and life of an intensely Chris- 
tian people, for many centuries." It must be 
admitted, indeed, that there is a strong, sad ten- 
dency to secularization in the literature of the 
public schools. The theistic and Christian 
elements are being eliminated. For the dis- 
tinctively Christian, there is a disposition on 
the part of the book-makers to substitute those 
general maxims and sentiments common to all 
religions, and which might as well be called 
pagan as Christian. And just as in the philosophy 
of teaching, there is a religious falling away from 
Jean Paul Bichter to Herbert Spencer, even 
while the general religious level of philosophy 



196 EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

has been kept up, so there are common school 
publications which show a decided retrogression, 
not only from the general standard of sentiment 
in the past, but from the prevailing standard of 
the present. But the supreme danger of the 
situation lies beyond the literature of the 
schools. While the danger from secular school- 
books is immediate, it is only a reflection of the 
real, ultimate danger, indicating that some 
mighty, secular influence has wrought upon that 
law of demand which dictates the quality of books 
as well the quantity of agricultural produce. 

An examination of the constitutional and stat- 
utory laws which relate to education will show 
that politics, rather than educational literature 
or philosophy, is responsible for this seculari- 
zation of the schools. 

Toequeville once said that governments are 
just as bad as the people will let them be. They 
are certainly just as secular as the people will 
permit them to be. And in a republic, espe- 
cially, where the alertness of the citizen is the 
guardianship of the law, the conventional poli- 
tician is likely to pose for the support of that 
class which most lustily demands recognition, 
and keeps him under the strictest political sur- 
veillance ; for which reason far too many of our 
laws merely reflect the sentiments of an aggres- 
sive, importunate minority. When there is po- 
litical inactivity or indifference on the part of any 



RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 197 

one class of citizens, politics naturally makes 
overtures to the opposite of that class. Ameri- 
can inactivity is followed by political compro- 
mise with elements foreign to the genius of our 
institutions, t The lethargy of Protestantism is 
the political opportunity of Jesuitism and the 
apostles of the Pope/ The political indifference 
of Christians in general, of the intelligent, the 
progressive, the moral, has its inevitable oppo- 
site in the political advancement of the irreligi- 
ous, the ignorant, the nihilistic, the depraved. 
And this is quite the case of the public schools, 
on both the secular and ecclesiastical extremes 
of opposition to them. The periodical intro- 
duction of bills into state legislatures providing 
for the division of public school funds to Eo- 
man Catholic institutions does not indicate that 
the legislators are becoming proselytes of the 
Vatican, but only that the Roman Catholic ele- 
ment of the American population is a very 
active political factor, and one which the poli- 
ticians will propitiate, in a conventional way, 
just as far as will not awaken Protestants from 
their characteristic lethargy. On the other 
hand, it is not to be assumed that legislation 
which tends to secularize the schools is always 
prompted by the righteous jealousy of anti- 
Catholics. The fact that atheists as well as 
Protestants rejoice in such legislation, justifies a 
fear that it often proceeds from a subtle hatred 



198 KELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

of all religious principles ; that it may simply 
be the influence of agnosticism against all posi- 
tive belief, the intolerance of the few for the 
faith of the many. 

But let us observe the tendency of law in the 
several states of the Union on this subject. In 
the constitution of the state of Massachusetts, 
adopted in 1780, the following language occurs : 
— u The encouragement of the arts and sciences 
and all good literature tends to the honor of 
God, the advantage of the Christian religion, 
and the great benefit of this and other states of 
the American Union." The advantage of the 
Christian religion, the glory of God, is here 
made an ultimate aim, education being fostered 
and encouraged, not because of its secular bene- 
fits alone, but pre-eminently because it sub- 
serves the all-important cause of religion. In 
the constitutional law of Maine there is found a 
provision equally emphatic : — "The same reser- 
vations shall be made for the benefit of schools 
and of the ministry as have heretofore been 
usual in grants made by this Commonwealth. 
And all lands heretofore granted by this Com- 
monwealth to any religious, literary or elee- 
mosynary corporation or society shall be free 
from taxation, while the same continues to be 
owned by such corporation or society." The 
constitution of the state of New York, adopted 
in 1777, made no provision for popular educa- 



RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 199 

tion, nor was any uniform school system adopted 
until 1812. This was not the silence of indiffer- 
ence, however. It is explained by the fact that 
education was tacitly left to the care of religious 
societies and public-spirited citizens, the provi- 
sion made in that way being thought entirely 
adequate. 

When we turn, however, to the constitutions 
adopted by the newer states, and to those 
amendments adopted or proposed for the consti- 
tutions of the original states, the secular trend 
of legislation is very apparent. Take, for 
example, the following provision in the consti- 
tution of Illinois : — " Neither the General As- 
sembly, nor any county, town, township, 
school-district, or other public corporation, 
shall ever make any appropriation or pay from 
any public fund whatever, anything in aid of 
any church or sectarian purpose, or to help 
support any school, academy, seminary, college, 
university, or other literary or scientific institu- 
tion controlled by any church or sectarian 
denomination whatever ; nor shall any grant or 
donation of land, money or other personal prop- 
erty, ever be made by the State, or any such 
public corporation, to any church or for any 
sectarian purpose." And this provision, with 
its strong contrast to those of older constitu- 
tions, is decidedly representative of the western 
states. Kansas and Nebraska have constitution- 



200 KELIGION 1ST THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

al clauses of the same import. Ohio, Michigan 
and Arkansas introduce sections on education 
with the affirmation that "Beligion, morality 
and knowledge are necessary to good govern- 
ment;" but they make provision for only the 
last of these essentials. And these constitution- 
al enactments in the new states were simply 
responsive to the tendency of jurisprudence in 
the East, one of the earliest indications of 
which was the proposition to so amend the con- 
stitution of Massachusetts, as to forbid taxation 
for any but secular schools. And while that 
amendment was defeated by the meagre majori- 
ty of 401, in a total vote of 130,623, the support 
it received was strong enough to foreshadow the 
most secular epoch in all the history of educa- 
tion. The states are coming into that epoch 
very steadily. The legislators have not failed 
to observe that the evangelical denominations 
seem more afraid of ecclesiasticism than of secu- 
larism ; that they are more averse to superstition 
than to infidelity. But while the nation is still 
strong in the healthy conservatism of Christian 
sentiment, while we still have the ability to turn 
back the political tide which is setting against 
Christianity, while Religion is still at the door 
of the public schools, pleading for recognition, 
let us look forward along our line of march, and 
see the end to which we are coming, as shown in 
the municipal schools of France — France, the 



EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 201 

impulse of whose people carries her through a 
whole epoch in a single day, and whose greatest 
service to the nations has been her ability to 
live a philosophy through to its conclusion so 
speedily as to make her an example, or else a 
danger-signal, to all the world. "As to the 
moral and civic instruction of the French 
schools," says Mathew Arnold, "it seems to me 
to be poor stuff, and I saw no signs of its touching 
the soul or mind of anybody receiving it. As to 
civic teaching, the most remarkable specimen of 
it which I met with, I will mention, for it is 
worth mentioning. ' Who gives you,' said the 
questioner to the children, ' all the benefits you 
are enjoying; these fine school-buildings with 
all their appliances, your instructors, this beau 
tiful city where you live, everything in which 
the comfort and security of your life consists ? ' 
I was attentive, for I said to myself: Surely 
the child must be going to answer what children 
have from time immemorial been taught to an- 
swer to the like question : ' God gives me all 
this ; ' and yet the name of God must not be 
used in a school of the Paris municipality. But 
the civic instruction proved equal to the occa- 
sion, and a legitimate answer came from the 
child : 'It is our country gives us all this.' The 
force of civic instruction, I think, could hardly 
go further." 
That is, however, the natural conclusion of a 



202 KELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

purely secular scheme of education. France, 
like herself, has come to the final result very 
quickly. But this radical change in the muni- 
cipal schools of France, what is it after all but a 
reflection of French politics ? Are not the com- 
mon people of that country as ardently Chris- 
tian as ever before ? And has there been any 
corresponding decline in the moral tone of 
French philosophy 1 No ; the change is one of 
authority rather than of sentiment, it is politics 
against the people. Self-government is still too 
much of an art to be taken up naturally and ef- 
fectually, and so the few that are alert and 
aggressive make the laws, while the multitudes, 
disguised to one another, perhaps, for want of 
organization, quietly submit. 

And the realized evil in France is the immi- 
nent danger in America. It will be urged, of 
course, that many of the changes going on in 
the educational laws of the several states, are 
brought about by Protestant awakenings to the 
ambition of the Roman Catholics for a division 
of the school funds. " JSTon- sectarian schools ! " 
that is the battle cry. But if the people would 
only face skepticism, which is the growing dan- 
ger, as well as superstition, which is a receding 
danger, the discovery would likely be made in 
many instances, that this battle-cry is raised in 
the camp of the adversaries of the faith, and 
that the apostles of anti- Christ are employing 



RELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 203 

evangelical jealousy as one of their most power- 
ful engines against the walls of Zion. 

If we speak of remedies, if we so far appreciate 
the problem as earnestly and prayerfully to desire 
a solution of it, we may profit by the experience 
of a nation which has apparently found a solu- 
tion of the matter at once practicable and satis- 
factory. After the disruption of the Nether- 
lands and the nationalization of Belgium, 
through the bitter controversy had on this sub- 
ject, Holland itself, though hitherto undis- 
turbed, became almost as profoundly agitated as 
the southern provinces had been. But Holland 
found a way of wisdom and safety, a concession 
being made to the Church by which children 
might receive instruction from their own reli- 
gious guides. " Religious teaching, by this ar- 
rangement, made no part of the regular course 
of study, but the school-room was to be placed 
at the disposal of the clergy before or after the 
regular school hours, for religious instruction." 

While there is suggestion for us, however, in 
those adjustments and compromises by which 
governments are wont to allay the fears or cher- 
ish the welfare of the people, the first and 
supreme need in America is, an agitation of this 
subject among the people themselves. The re- 
ligious consciousness of the citizen must be 
awakened. It must be realized that, in a repub- 
lic, religious interests are only conserved by a 



204 EELIGION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

degree of political watchfulness. And events 
will no longer wait upon the latent sentiments 
of the inactive. The problem can no longer be 
evaded by that negative philosophy which puts 
protest for theory, and manifests the spirit of 
controversy rather than of enterprise. The 
Churches must substitute for that armed neu- 
trality which assumes the guardianship of the 
schools, merely to exclude a particular religious 
creed, merely to exclude one another, a positive, 
genuine guardianship which shall open the door 
to the fundamental principles of the faith, rec- 
ognizing the fact that the alternatives in Amer- 
ica are no longer medievalism and liberty, no 
longer superstition and self-government, but re- 
ligion and secularism, faith and infidelty, God 
and Mammon. 

Under a school of painting which held itself 
the servant of religion, a beautiful picture of 
Charity was produced. It was a female figure, 
laden with fruits and flowers, standing in the 
midst of a golden harvest-field, and haloed with 
glorious sunlight. But the hand of God ap- 
peared also in the scene, extended through the 
sunlight, and represented' as dispensing it all. 
Afterward there was developed a school of art 
which knew not the Creator ; and under this 
school another interpretation of Charity was 
given. It differed very little, on first observance, 



KELIGI0N IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 205 

from the earlier representation. The female 
figure was as beautiful as before, as profusely 
laden with fruits and flowers ; the harvest- 
sheaves were there as plentifully ; the sunlight 
was over all : but the hand of Gfod was gone. 



Japan our Macedonia 



[On. the departure of a Methodist Protestant Missionary to Japan.J 



G 



0, herald, go, the cry is heard. 
Beneath the rising sun : 

We hunger for the living word, 
For Christ, the holy One. 



RESPONSIVE CHORUS. 

Japan, our Macedonia, has called across the sea, 

For tidings of the happy land where many mansions be : 

They hear afar the gospel bells that make the nations free. 

Their pagan gods are gone ! 
Glory, glory, hallelujah ! 

The Christ is marching on. 

Our prayers above the sails are spread ; 

And, on the lonely sea, 
Shall cross the storm, with stately tread, 

The Lord of Galilee. 

Where gilded temples proudly hold 

The form of ancient vow, 
The hopes which lit those shrines of old, 

Before the Saviour bow. 

A pledge from thee, O Zion fair, 

The Bridegroom now demands. 
Shall faith withhold the gifts that bear 
His love to farthest lands ? 
(206) 



Henry Ward Beecher. 



WHEN the merely carnal man dies, the 
man whose activities are all circum- 
scribed by the animal nature, whose life compre- 
hends nothing more than physical waste and 
repair, a little domestic world simply asks the 
relevant, worldly question : " Where shall we 
make his grave?" When the merely social 
creature dies, the one whose heart is altogether 
absorbed in the endeavor to conform to the fash- 
ions, the customs and the traditions, a little 
social world inquires : " Who may properly be 
invited to attend the funeral?" When the 
miser dies, the man to whom money -getting has 
been a blind, burning passion, a little commer- 
cial world asks : " Who inherits the property ? " 
But when God sends down the fiery chariot of 
Israel and bears away the man of worth, of 
character, of spiritual substance, of genius, 
whether his plane of life has been exalted or 
lowly, the great world stands still for a moment, 
hushed and awe-stricken, and like the sons of 
the prophets who waited on the banks of the 

(207) 



208 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Jordan, scarcely knowing, in their sense of 
bereavement, whether to bow submissively as to 
the voice of God, or to go and search for the lost 
one on the mountains, failing to realize that 
God has actually spoken, that the prophet is 
indeed forever gone. 

The Christian world waited very prayerfully 
around the death-bed of Henry Ward Beech- 
er, recognizing him as not only an eloquent 
defender of the faith, but as a great champion 
of human rights. Shall not the Christian world 
bow as submissively now, under the shadow of 
the Almighty, trusting that while God may 
relieve his workmen, his work, through other 
instrumentalities, will go on to glorious consum- 
mation % Howbeit, when a full man like Beech- 
er, a man so happily poised and proportioned 
to great things, is taken out of the world, it is 
difficult for us to see just how the intellectual 
and spiritual void is to be filled, especially if we 
discern that his exaltation arose from a union of 
natural worth and divine favor. The world may 
develop very good Kings ; or may. go abroad to 
search for them among the princes, as poor Bul- 
garia does, only to be perplexed for the great 
multitude of them. But the great priests and 
prophets of God must be sent of God himself ; 
and when they stand up among men it wants no 
Diogenes lamp to find them. If Victoria should 
be taken away, there is not only an heir-appar- 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 209 

ent to the throne, schooled some forty years in 
the graces for sitting there ; but is there not, 
besides, an entire royal household of princes and 
a great parliament of noblemen and commoners 
with brows full broad enough for the crown of 
England ? If the Emperor William should fall, 
there is not only a trusted crown-prince of Ger- 
many, but a background of royalty large enough 
to lay claim to all the imperial crowns the world 
might call for. And as for the Republic, has 
not every State its possible Presidents, and 
every County its possible Governors, and every 
voting precinct its possible Congressmen? Oh, 
yes ; for so light a matter as crowns, and titles, 
and preferments, and places, the world has an 
abundance of material, whether we speak of 
the willing who are incapable or the capable 
who are reluctant. But when real worth departs 
out of the world, the merit of rank is a very 
frail substitute for it. When a whole continent 
goes down, like the lost Atlantis, a volcanic 
island, here and there, is a very fragmentary 
compensation. 

And yet this perplexing ourselves about fill- 
ing a great man' s place doubtless arises from a 
false philosophy of life. Every man is divinely 
fitted to his own sphere, and, in the end, the 
man having accomplished what he was designed 
to do, God simply closes the door of that life- 
sphere and writes thereon: "It is finished. " 

14 



210 HE^BY TTAED BEECHER 

And so the true life, the round, full, symmetri- 
cal life, never leaves a place to be filled. Death 
comes, to the one living such a life, as that last 
touch upon the marble which brings the angel to 
view. 

If we go farther than the simple statement 
that Henry Ward Beecher was possessed of all 
those natural endowments which group them- 
selves under the name of genius, if, in a word, 
we undertake anything like an analysis of the 
sources of his power, we should not fail to speak 
of his pMlosopMcal memory. That he was a 
man of the most vivid sensibilities, the keenest 
observation, the most unfailing attention, and 
predisposed, by industrious habits of intellect, 
to make the very most of the rarest opportuni- 
ties, goes without the saying. But the chief 
excellence of his wonderful memory was its 
power of discrimination between the essential 
and the non-essential. In his reading and 
observation he could, with the greatest facility, 
appropriate the substantial and reject the com- 
monplace, appropriate the thing and reject the 
mere garb, appropriate the genuine and reject 
the spurious. And this tenacity with exclusive- 
ness was a wonderful help to him as an orator. 
For his immense range of reading not only 
enabled him to call up and subordinate to his 
purpose, the historical incident, the scientific 
principle, the personal reminiscence^ and the 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 211 

theological truth, but he could grasp at once, 
with that philosophical memory, the very pith 
and marrow of things, so that his audiences were 
not compelled to see the incident, or principle, or 
truth, through a long perspective of words, but 
face to face, and with all the vividness of present 
reality. 

His trustworthy impulses constituted another 
great source of power, often sweeping him on- 
ward when the more conservative rational fac- 
ulties would have dictated silence and inactivi- 
ty. Indeed, he was more the child of impulse 
than of reason, his emotional nature overflowing 
all bounds, and flooding his whole being with 
fiery indignation against wrong, or with gener- 
ous sympathy for the oppressed. This under- 
tow of impulse largely exx>lains his many-sided- 
ness, and the multiform phases of his influence. 
And how manifold his life was is indicated, 
almost grotesquely sometimes, by the confident 
way in which men compare him with the most 
opposite historical characters. He has been 
compared at once with a pagan orator like 
Demosthenes, and with a Christian reformer 
like Luther ; with a theological autocrat like 
Edwards, and a voice of the people like Chal- 
mers. His reason generally approved, indeed, 
what his impulses had performed. It was 
impulse that launched him into the anti- slavery 
agitation, the temperance reform and the conflict 



212 HENKY WAED BEECHEK. 

for the American Union. But he seldom made 
what might be called an emotional blunder. 
His very impulses seemed to be clothed with a 
will power all their own. His very instincts 
were rational. Happily, therefore, as happily 
for the world as for his own fame, trust wortiiy 
impulses often bore him and the cause he cham- 
pioned to the very goal of victory, before the 
merely intellectual faculties would have discov- 
ered the opportunity of victory. 

His impulses, furthermore, link together many 
acts and sentiments of his life which might 
otherwise seem inconsistent with, if not directly 
opposed to, one another. When, in 1850, Wen- 
dell Phillips was excluded from the Broadway 
Tabernacle, lest a threatening mob should de- 
stroy the building, Beecher, braving hostility 
and defying danger, admitted the abolition ora- 
tor to Plymouth Church. He exclaimed that he 
would rather preach over the ashes of Plymouth 
Church than have its doors closed against the 
cause of Freedom. But when the war of the 
Rebellion was over, his heart immediately 
warmed into a blaze of sympathy for the strick- 
en South ; and he clasped hands in a covenant 
of national friendship with a prominent Confed- 
erate General, amid the enthusiastic shouts of 
the aristocracy of the Confederate capital : his 
impulse thus anticipating that new era of good 
will which it required many years for the slow 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 213 

logic of sectional minds to recognize. And he 
was criticised very severely for this leniency to- 
ward the South. Men said that his ready and 
unqualified forgiveness was incompatible with a 
righteous indignation against the wrong of un- 
provoked rebellion : that his sympathy for the 
oppressed slave was a higher grade of sentiment 
than sympathy for the vanquished slaveholder. 
Lut in the loftiest emotions of every Christian 
heart, the two incidents are linked together. 
The two sentiments were as truly akin as are jus- 
tice and mercy in the nature of God, and sprang 
from the one fountain of generous impulses in 
the great deep of a royal soul. 

Another and very profound source of Beech- 
er's power was his faith in the people, a faith 
which was unfailing and which extended to all 
peoples, everywhere. He was in sympathy with 
the burden-bearing multitude, and had confi- 
dence in their capacity for self-government. His 
political creed embraced not only a recognition 
of popular rights, but a belief in popular sove- 
reignty. "I hold that Democracy," he said, 
"not Democracy in that sordid and draggled 
use of the term which belongs to American poli- 
tics, but Democracy as the representative of 
something higher than the thief s law and the 
beast' s cruelty ; Democracy as representing a 
large, Christian idea, — T hold that this is the 
blessed Angel of God, that is flying over the 



214 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

nations with trumpet in hand, proclaiming the 
final victories of Christ in the world. Through 
much tribulation, through much blood, through 
wars and revolutions, these victories are to come, 
nevertheless there is a certainty of their coming. 
The universal brain is showing itself to be 
mightier than the class brain, the crowned head 
must give way to the thinking heads of the mil- 
lions." 

This faith in the people distinguished Beecher 
from the very men he otherwise most closely 
resembled. Chalmers and Beecher had very 
much in common, the great Scottish divine hav- 
ing been, in spiritual temperament and in many 
of the intellectual qualities, a fair prototype of 
the great American. But while Chalmers was 
in heartiest sympathy with the common people, 
Beecher had the more confidence in them. Chal- 
mers felt for the people ; Beecher believed in 
them. Chalmers' predominant sentiment was 
charity; Beecher' s was fraternity. Chalmers, 
in his humility, made himself the servant of the 
lowly ; Beecher, in his hopefulness, made him- 
self their friend. Chalmers pitied and helped ; 
Beecher helped, and forgot to pity. Chalmers 
was the disciple of the humanities ; Beecher was 
their apostle. Chalmers would have taken an 
unfortunate by the hand and said, *'Thou poor, 
miserable creature, I do so much desire to help 
you." Beecher, taking that same unfortunate' s. 



HENRY WARD BEECHEE. 215 

hand, would have said, "Thou art my brother ; 
and in obedience to a brother's obligations, I am 
come to help you." 

We may venture to ascribe much of the power 
Beecher wielded among men to his ready dis- 
cernment of truth, and Ms cheerful recognition 
of truth from whatever source it came. He was 
In no sense a sectarian. He despised bigotry, 
intolerance, cant, and all their kindred. 

If a creed embraced enough of the living 
Christ to baptize dogma with philanthropy, 
enough to make it serve the needs of the pres- 
ent as well as the hopes of the future, he had a 
hearty benediction for it. Theophilanthropism 
is a long word, but it makes a short confession 
of faith ; and that was the sum of Beecher' s 
creed. And his discernment of truth was so 
clear and practical, withal, that it assumed an 
immediate relationship to some critical, moral 
issue in human society. He could so far fore- 
caste the future on lines of popular sentiment 
and reform, that we may almost attribute to him 
a measure of the prophetic element. 

While broader than sect in his sympathies, 
however, he was narrower than sect in his later 
theology. And perhaps this spiritual discern- 
ment itself, finally trusted too far, led him into 
mistaken lines of thought ; perhaps, coming to 
look upon himself through this magnifying mir- 
ror, he grew extremely self-reliant thereby. 



216 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Howbeit, the theology of the individual is often 
narrower than the theology of the convocation ; 
and the term "broad" or "liberal" is by no 
means always descriptive of the man who refuses 
to run his private car over the track of the centu- 
ries. Indeed, the Christian who renounces his 
denominational creed simply to build upon his 
own theological capital will almost invariably 
find that he has left a grand-trunk line for a lo- 
cal narrow-gauge, terminating in the shadows of 
Sinai or the valley of Hinnom. 

I have said " his later theology." And if the 
charge of individualism can be justly made 
against Beecher at all, it must be made, prima- 
rily, upon his later utterances. Those outbursts 
of impatience with old forms which sometimes 
missed their mark and hit old truths ; those 
flashes of heterodoxy which convinced so many 
that " he was not a safe guide" — these lapses 
and departures run parallel with what must be 
called the period of intellectual decline. If you 
follow his sermons back along the years until 
you come to those which are indisputably ortho- 
dox, you find just there the greatest intellectual 
brawn, and force, and fire ; the keenest wit, the 
clearest logic, the happiest imagery, the subtlest 
analysis of human nature, the loftiest sentiment, 
and that true sublimity which flows from a 
childlike susceptibility to the divine in nature 
and in history. 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 217 

And yet again Beecher' s theology has been 
far too often judged by his fragmentary utter- 
ances ; while some have perhaps assumed to 
condemn the whole superstructure of his belief 
from the scaffolding of words upon which he 
stood to perform the work, too impatient to 
await the final stroke, and too superficial to 
walk with him through the building. True 
greatness is complex, sometimes elusive ; often 
incomprehensible, withal, to those who insist 
upon studying it in detached portions, or from 
the standpoint of art rather than that of nature. 

If you stand before a great landscape painting, 
you find that every feature is responsive to the 
rules of art. All the unities are preserved. The 
essentials have been adopted and the non-essen- 
tials excluded. The whole combination has for 
its object, to please. But go out under the 
open heavens, abroad in the realm of nature, 
where all things are God-made and sun-painted. 
You find that certain features are essential in 
nature which are non-essential in art. You find 
many disagreeable things out there in the real 
world, indeed, simply because God made nature 
to serve man even more than to please him. 

Look upon the Falls of Niagara, and hear its 
tumultuous voice, the voice which spake the 
praise of G-od before Miriam sang her wonderful 
song. Can a Mozart subdue that voice of nature 
to the sphere of music % Can any Archimedes 



218 HENRY WAPwD BEECHER. 

describe all its majestic movements in mathema- 
tical terms ? Yiew the Palisades of the Hudson, 
older than the walls of Babylon, more venerable 
than the Pyramids. How irregular and broken 
are the lines of that fortress of nature ! Stand 
beneath the wings of the storm, and while the 
awe of its brooding presence is upon thee, say if 
thou canst put the storm in a crucible, or set 
bounds to its course by a proclamation of law. 
Xay, these are all the workmanship of G-od, and 
you put off the shoes from your feet, feeling 
that the place whereon you stand is holy ground. 
But when God creates a great man for a great 
work, and sanctifies him to it, does He not sanc- 
tify that nature as a unit ; and may not its rug- 
ged features, those beyond the reach of theolog. 
ical anatomy, the mountains hooded with 
clouds, the Niagaras dashing themselves into 
foam and spray, and the storms that beat down 
upon all faces that turn heavenward — may not 
these things have their divine purpose in the 
leaders of men beyond our capacity to see ? A 
little statuesque man, a little melo-dramatic 
fellow, who conceives of nothing to do in this 
great world except to hold his prayer-book at 
the proper angle and pronounce the shibboleth 
of his sect with just the proper stress and inflec- 
tion — yes, such a man can be very readily com- 
prehended, and the multitudes will read him and 
take his spiritual measurement as they indiffer- 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 219 

ently pass him by. But this man Beecher was 
one of those pillars of alternate cloud and fire 
which God appoints to go before His people 
toward Lands of Promise. He was a great 
heartful of that new wine which God pours out 
unto the world as the centuries go. Men took 
this new wine and put it in the old bottle of 
Calvinism. The old bottle was broken, and the 
new wine of Christian love, augmented by some 
very good old wine, too long imprisoned there, 
flowed forth, a mighty Gospel river, to the soul- 
thirsty multitudes. 

Best of all, Beecher had a prayerful hold 
upon God. His temperament was theopathetical 
rather than theological. Some one has expressed 
the belief that he was inspired to pray as well 
as to preach. And certainly when a man is 
visited with inspiration it will manifest itself in 
no way so evidently and copiously as in the out- 
pourings of his soul before God. 

We shall miss the presence of this typical 
preacher from among men, and the earthly treas- 
ury of wisdom and benevolence is the poorer for 
his departure ; but his life-work is monumen- 
tal, and we think of his spirit as housed in the 
divine Home ; while we realize, never so vividly 
as when the guides of the people bow to the uni- 
versal and inexorable law of death, that " God 
alone is great." 



The Light of Life, 



L 



[First published in the Methodist Recorder.'] 

0, from the valley where He died, 

Where Christ his humble reign began, 

By forces mighty as the tide, 

His Kingdom grows from man to man ! 



His ways, increasing, compass mine, 
And all their doubtful steps control, 

There falls a lustre so divine 

From his dear face upon the soul. 

And every passion of the heart, 
In touching Him that loves me so, 

Shall crucify its grosser part, 
And into sweet affection grow. 

The fond desires I cannot gain, 
The things I cannot understand, 

I know that He will make them plain, 
And I will leave them in his hand. 

His hidden purpose shall fulfill 

His love, though dimly understood, 

And, in the fashion of his will, 
It worketh out to something good. 
(220) 



The Sacrificial Love of 
God. 

[Preached in Plymouth Methodist Protestant Church, Adrian, Mich.~\ 
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He 

LOVED US, AND SENT HlS SON TO BE THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR 

SINS." — 1 John iv. 10. 



" w r HE ^ ®°& sent an g eis to p° ur plagues 

VV upon the earth," says Jeremy Taylor, 
1 ' there were in their hands golden vials ; for the 
death of men is precious and costly, and it is an 
expense that God does not delight in. But the 
vessels of wrath were vials, that is vessels out of 
which no great evil could come at once, but only 
with difficulty, sobbing and troubled as it passes 
forth." The Gospel of the Kingdom of God, 
however, embodies a miracle of mercy infinitely 
greater than the mere restraints of divine wrath. 
It is, conditionally, the cessation of divine 
wrath, the vials of judgment being swept away 
in fountains of mercy ; and it is only when the 
unpardonable sin of the final rejection of divine 
mercy turns aside the streams thereof, that the 

(221) 



222 THE SACEIFTCIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

vessels of wrath are ever again poured out upon 
the world. 

And God' s hatred of sin has always been ac- 
companied by God's love for the sinner. In the 
divine Government, the plan of redemption ante- 
dates the penalty of sin, and overtures of peace 
always accompany the declaration of war. And 
so Christ is called "the Lamb slain from the 
foundation of the world," this scripture no 
doubt signifying that believers in God were sav- 
ed, through Christ, even before His incarnation, 
their faith anticipating the atonement, and God 
imputing unto them, through their faith, the 
righteousness of the only-begotten Son, who was 
already anointed in heaven for the work of 
Redemption. This pre-Messianic atonement 
was the first expression of the sacrificial love of 
God. The divine Heart had already consented 
to the heavenly gift, and already the infinite 
sorrow of Gethsemane had begun its awful, eter- 
nal pulsings in the bosom of the Most High. 
And so out of those old times we hear of Abra- 
ham embracing the promises afar oft* ; of David 
glorifying the Kingdom of Christ while as yet it 
remained only a loving purpose in the divine 
heart ; of Isaiah pouring out the offerings of a 
great soul in the rapt vision of the mountain of 
the Lord's house. And all these were saved 
because they accepted the promised Christ, the 
substance of the Gospel. The formal cause, the 



THE SACKIFICTAL LOVE OF GOD. 223 

idea, determines the character of the building, 
or of the painting ; so the forgiveness and salva- 
tion of the believing soul is determined in the 
mind of God. The plan is as He wills, whether 
prophetic or Messianic. The word of God, when 
promising the gift, is just as substantial and as 
efficacious as the gift itself. That once way- 
ward, homeless prodigal, when forgiven and re- 
adopted by his father, the king, enters at once 
upon the substance of his inheritance. The 
father may retain the ownership for years after 
the reconciliation, and may possess all the pro- 
perty and all the honors, de jure ; but then the 
homelessness, the beggary, the shame, have 
given way to abundance and honor ; and the 
world, rightly construing the filial reconciliation 
as foreshadowing the benefits of a full inherit- 
ance, thinks of love as if it were substance, and 
includes the restored son in all their references 
to the royal family. 

And here we must emphasize the sacrificial 
nature of God's love, as distinguishing it from 
man's love toward God. For " herein is love, 
not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and 
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." 
Human love is only relative, accidental, pas- 
sive ; divine love is absolute, positive and eter- 
nal. Human love is relative rather than abso- 
lute, as I have said. The conjugal and filial 
passions are only stages of the one golden path- 



224 THE SACRIFICIAL LOYE OF GOD. 

way which leads up to the praise of heroes and 
to the worship of G-od. And the same law of 
selection which separates the great world of 
childhood from the little group of children in 
our own home, projects itself into the world of 
friendship, and excludes those who persistently 
hate us, or wrong us, or whom we wrong. It is 
the same law, on a still higher plane, which 
makes our love relate to the goodness or excel- 
lence of its object, and in accordance with which 
we withhold our affection from the miserable 
and the needy of earth, and expend it in hero- 
worship ; upon Socrates, the father of Philoso- 
phy ; upon Paul and Ambrose, and Wicliffe and 
Luther, the heroes of Christian history ; upon 
Epimenides, Cromwell and Washington, the 
champions of civil liberty ; upon Shakspeare, 
the well of song. It is this same law of love, 
lifted up out of the atmosphere of earth, and 
enveloped in the light of revelation, which 
excludes all other objects of worship and depre- 
ciates all other objects of love, realizing that 
there is no God but God, and so lifting up the 
cry of old out of a glowing heart : " Whom 
have I in heaven but Thee ; and there is none 
upon earth that I desire besides thee." 

But it is the weakness of all human ]ove that 
it leads men to impute all amiability and worth 
to the objects of their own friendship, while 
they despoil the common humanity they despise 



THE SACEIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 225 

or neglect, the more profusely to invest their 
own heroes with all the honor of being good 
and great. And there are those, I have some- 
times thought, who miss all there is of God in 
nature, all of the divine loveliness pervading the 
homes and hearts of men, and ascribe the won- 
drous beauty, the force, the majesty, the pas- 
sion, displayed in the universe, to an abstract 
Being, whom they may ignorantly worship afar 
off, indeed, but whom they can never in such 
mind experience, and to whom they can never 
trustingly cry, " Abba, Father." 

Human love, again, is passive, only respond- 
ing to an inciting or reciprocal act. "We ]ove 
God," says John, " because He first loved us." 
Human love is accidental. We can love God 
very devotedly, as long as providence means 
prosperity, and while our hearts are all aglow 
with the winsome, wooing thoughts of reward, 
the thoughts of the absolute good, of eternal 
happiness. But when providence seems to mean 
adversity, affliction, bereavement, temptation ; 
when our visions of heaven are momentarily 
eclipsed by the intervening shadow of death, 
then questionings take the place of trust, and, 
if the everlasting arms were not beneath us, our 
poor, relative, passive, impotent love would be 
swept away forever. 

But God's love to us-ward is absolute, positive 
and omnipotent ; its contradistinction from 

15 



226 THE SACEIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

human love being shown by its original, sacri- 
ficial nature : for ' ' herein is love, not that we 
loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His 
Son to be the propitiation for our sins." " For 
scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet, 
peradventure, for a good man some would even 
dare to die. Friends have been willing to die 
for their friends. Damon pledged his life as a 
bond for the return of Pythias. Victor Hugo so 
fully believed in the sacrificial spirit of friend- 
ship as to represent Gauvain as dying in the 
place of his kinsman Lantenac, while Gauvain' s 
friend, Cimourdain, permitting the vicarious act 
from a sense of duty, dies of a broken heart in 
witnessing it. Hero- worshippers, too, have died 
for their heroes, and have even died for naught, 
at their hero's command. Were not the shrines 
of Alexander, Semiramis and Napoleon crimson 
with the blood of thousands ? " But God com- 
mendeth His love toward us, in that, while we 
were yet sinners, Christ died for us." 

But let us contemplate the varied manifesta- 
tions of this sacrificial love of God. The vica- 
rious mission of Jesus, as we may see, compre- 
hends a three-fold sacrifice : First, the incarna- 
tion, the sacrifice of the heavenly home ; second, 
the assumption of the world's weight of sin, the 
sacrifice of heavenly peace ; last, the death of 
the Cross, the sacrifice of that earthly life which, 
once assumed, gave Him, in the most delicate 



THE SACKIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 227 

and intensified form, all the physical sensibil- 
ities, all the capacities of suffering, of which the 
human nature is possessed. 

' 'The voluntary incarnation," says Yan 
Oosterzee, " is that act of love on the part of the 
Son of God, by which He assumed our human 
nature of the virgin Mary, through the operation 
of the Holy Spirit, and thus became personally 
united to our race." "The awful beginning of 
the humiliation of Christ," exclaims Tertulian, 
" was when God vouchsafed to be born." 

Is there any earthly parallel to such sacrifice 
as this \ What is the loss of social caste, or 
political power, as compared with this ; or even 
the loss of life, when that life has never been 
divinely capacitated for joy and sorrow by the 
experience of heaven % History has made us 
familiar indeed with the voluntary act of a king, 
by which he laid aside his crown that he might 
devote his undivided attention to philosophy 
and religion. We may recall the impressive 
fact that the noblemen of Chios, in the olden 
times, were compelled, by a turn in the fortunes 
of war, to exchange places with their slaves. In 
India there are social offences as well as social 
accidents by which the lofty bramin becomes 
the poor, despised sudra. 

And the story of Buddha Sudara himself, 
who was certainly one of the witnesses of God 
among the heathen, affords a beautiful example 



228 THE SACEIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

of sacrifice for the interests of humanity. Bom 
a prince, lie was slmt up in a splendid palace, 
imprisoned in luxury, that he might be unac- 
customed to the miseries of the world. He saw 
no sickness, no physical deformity, no phantom 
of sin, no scene of death. But one day this 
royal prince, notwithstanding the precautions of 
the king, caught sight of an aged, deformed, 
miserable beggar. It was the first scene of 
misery he had ever beheld, and it made so pro- 
found an impression upon him, that, attention 
leading to sympathy, sympathy to compassion, 
compassion to sacrificial love, he threw aside all 
the signs and all the substance of royalty, de- 
serted the royal palace and the queenly wife 
who had made that jmlace dear to him as a 
home ; spurned the inheritance of a kingdom, 
and went forth into the tumult of life to be- 
come a burden-bearer to them that were in 
need. There was sacrificial love, a kind and 
degree of it, at least, in the heart of this ideal 
prince and teacher ; and all men are true to the 
mission of life, true heroes, whether as states- 
men, poets, philosophers, priests or craftsmen, 
whether their service is mental or manual, just 
to the degree in which their hearts throb in 
sympathetic response to the cares and sorrows, 
the hopes and joys, of their fellow-men. But all 
these human conceptions and manifestations of 
sacrifical love are but dim fore shado wings of the 



THE SACRIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 229 

sacrificial love of God. They are limited to the 
sphere of the present ; they are only heroisms 
of a day, circumscribed in feeling, in thought 
and in substance, whereas the mystery of the 
incarnation comprehends every degree in the 
circle of life, terrestrial and spiritual, its lines 
of influence reaching even into the sanctuary of 
angels and the household of God. The nobility 
of earth can only sacrifice caste and social dis- 
tinction. The royalty of earth can only discard 
earthly crowns. But Christ was divine, with all 
the exaltations implied in divinity, and he be- 
came voluntarily human, with all the degrada- 
tions, all the accumulated bitterness of want and 
woe inherent in a fallen race. He was as far 
above man as are the fixed stars above the 
swamp-fires of earth ; but He put off the robes 
of light and clothed himself in a mantle of 
gloom. "For verily he took not on him the 
nature of angels ; but he took on him the seed 
of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it be- 
hooved him to be made like unto his brethren, 
that he might be a merciful and faithful high- 
priest in things pertaining to God, to make re- 
conciliation for the sins of the people." " For 
ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he 
became poor, that ye, through his poverty, might 
be made rich." "And the Word was made flesh 
and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. 



230 THE SACEIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, 
fnll of grace and truth." 

And Jesus not only clothed himself with our 
human nature, but he took upon himself the 
burden of our sin. "The chastisement of our 
peace was upon him." He assumed and bore for 
us, upon his great, vicarious heart, the whole 
aggregate of woe which had become the inheri- 
tance of humanity through the parentage of 
sin. 

Men have glorified that Swiss patriot, who, 
to break the Austrian phalanx, spread forth his 
arms and gathered to his own body a group of 
hostile, deadly spears, that his compatriots 
might rush into the breach and complete the 
victory of freedom. But this hero's achieve- 
ment was as incomplete as it was courageous ; 
for after all his sacrifice, notwithstanding his 
willing immolation on the altar of his country, 
there remained a myriad weapons more, and 
others still must fall to make the single heroism 
significant and effectual. But in the arena of 
redemption we have the one omnipotent, all-suf- 
ficient Saviour ; and, with the sweep of his 
divine arms, this Saviour gathers to his own 
devoted heart all the sword-points of sin and all 
the shafts of hell, obtaining, with that one awful 
sacrifice, the spiritual freedom and immortality 
of a lost world. 

And the first great result of Christ's assump- 



THE SACRIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 231 

tion of the world' s sin was, doubtless, the sacri- 
fice of his inward peace. The nature of Jesus, 
in itself, must have been an infinite calm. 
Divine repose as well as divine purity muse have 
characterized the soul of the Master. His 
nature was as an ocean without tides or storms. 
But when the world's sins began to weigh upon 
this pure and self-poised nature, then came the 
tides and storms, and just because of human 
guilt his whole life became a troubled sea. The 
fountains of the great deep of his soul were 
broken up, and, beneath the exterior calm 
sustained by a divine will, we may discern, in 
all the scenes of his life, the evidences of a 
perturbed heart. Do we not remember that his 
words were tremulous with divine wrath when 
he rebuked the formal but heartless religion of 
the Scribes and Pharisees ? Do we not remem- 
ber how his nature was swayed by tides of 
divine sorrow over the grave of Lazarus? Do 
we not remember with what depths of divine 
yearning he wept over the rebellious city of 
Jerusalem ? Do we not remember how all 
the fountains of his soul were poured out in 
streams of divine love and compassion, on the 
Cross? Well, these passionate outbursts of 
righteousness and of sympathy were but the 
leaping flames of a perpetual sacrifice, that 
sacrifice signifying the loss of spiritual repose, 
of the conscious presence of the Father, of 



232 THE SACEIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

the heart's resting-place, the loss of heavenly 
peace. 

And it was this commotion of sin, one must 
believe, which led Jesus so often away into 
communion with the Father. Solitude, broken 
only by his prayer and the answering voice of 
God, was at once a balm for wounds received 
and a fortressing against ills to come. Solitude 
was perhaps a momentary restoration of heav- 
enly peace. The solitudes of the Saviour were, 
indeed, a preparation for the great assemblies. 
Lonely Galilee was a preparation for crowded 
Capernaum with its impotent multitudes. The 
lonely Mount of Transfiguration was a prepara- 
tion for the popular tumult of Jerusalem. The 
temptations of the lonely Wilderness fortified 
him against the clamor of the people to make 
him King. Lonely Gethsemane was a discipline, 
under the ministry of angels, for Pilate's hall 
and the crucible of death. And Gethsemane was 
the consummation of his life's loneliness, just as 
Calvary was the climax of his life's tumultuous- 
ness. "Ah, what multitudes of tears," says 
one, "what myriads of bloody drops, have been 
shed in secrecy about the three corner- trees of 
earth, — the tree of life, the tree of knowledge 
and the tree of liberty." But the chief corner- 
tree of earth is the tree of Redemption. Geth- 
semane is the symbol of its awful shade ; and 
there the high-priest of humanity wept for us, 



THE SACEIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 233 

sowing in tears that he might reap in joy. He 
entered the crucible of death, and but of its con- 
suming fires he brought forth to us the crown 
of life. He went down into the troubled waters, 
so that, calmed by the breath of his power, they 
might flow forth to us a river of peace. Geth- 
semane, queen of all the sorrow-spots of earth, 
hast thou witnessed in vain the bleeding of the 
Saviour's heart? O thou unsaved one, come 
out from the bondage of sin to-day, and lose 
your burden at the Cross ! 

A poor idol-worshipper of India had become 
convinced of sin. The consciousness of guilt 
weighed, oh so heavily, upon him ; and accom- 
panying this sense of sin there came also the 
feeling that he needed something beyond the 
worship of his fathers. He felt the necessity of 
an atonement. He went, therefore, to a native 
pagan priest, who commanded him to put on 
sandals bristling with iron thongs, so that his 
feet should be lacerated as he walked upon 
them, and that upon these he should go a long 
journey. The poor penitent, willing to do any- 
thing, set out straightway upon the task. But 
while he endured the pain with the spirit of a 
martyr, no martyr's blessing came. His patient 
suffering brought no relief to his troubled heart. 
Having journeyed many days, however, he 
came at length to the shelter of a great tree, 
where a company of people were assembled 



234 THE SACEIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

anxiously listening to the address of one in the 
garb of a foreigner. The poor pilgrim, travel- 
worn, despondent, bruised, hungry, paused to 
listen, too, and the first words that reached him 
were these : " God so loved the world that He 
gave His only -begotten Son, that whosoever be- 
lie veth on him might not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life." " that is just what I have been 
looking for ! " cried the penitent ; and he threw 
off his sandals to accept the all-atoning Saviour, 
and to rejoice in a free and full salvation. 

" Then let ns sit beneath his cross, 
And gladly catch the healing stream ; 
All things for him account but loss, 
And give up all our hearts to him : 
Of nothing think or speak beside, — 
My Lord, My Love, was crucified." 

In the death of Jesus the sacrificial love of 
God had its perfect consummation. And there 
is a sense, indeed, in which the whole life of the 
Master was simply the act of dying for the 
world. Just think of the glad tidings again. 

In a rude grotto, at Bethlehem, there lies a 
newborn babe. All the circumstances connected 
with the event are such as associate themselves 
with abject poverty. And yet, in the divine 
thought, the occasion was accounted worthy of 
a triumphal song by the angels of heaven, and 
wise men brought to the homeless infant the 
offerings due unto a king. 



THE SACRIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 235 

By the lake of Galilee there stands a poor 
wayfaring man. " He is only a carpenter's 
son," they say ; he is of the lowliest ancestry, 
without culture, without social standing, with- 
out material possessions. But somehow he has 
manifested a wonderful sympathy for the peo- 
ple, and a disposition to bear their burdens ; 
and finally it begins to be said that the blind 
see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the, 
deaf hear, the poor have the Gospel preached 
unto them, and, wonderful story ! the dead are 
raised, by the power of this lowly man. 

In an isolated garden under the Mount of 
Olives, the teacher and healer known as Jesus of 
Nazareth is at prayer, surrounded by a few lin- 
gering disciples. The school of the parables is 
closed now, and on the master's face appear 
the deepest lines of care ; and lines of pain, as if 
great anguish of soul were upon him, as if that 
universal shadow which lengthens over all 
hearts and homes had been rolled into one bil- 
lowy cloud of outer darkness, and had rested 
there in Gethsemane, a shroud for the man of 
sorrows. 

Just outside the gates of Jerusalem, there stands 
a wooden cross, the Roman instrument of death 
to criminals. But the one they crucify thereon 
now is the innocent Babe of Bethlehem, grown 
up at last to his crown of thorns, yet as innocent 
still. He is all alone. He is dying all alone. 



236 THE SACBLFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

The monuments of a glorious life are his only- 
advocates. Where are the blind that now see, 
and the lame that now walk, and the lepers 
that now are cleansed, and the dead that now 
live again % They have left him all alone among 
the echoes of the voice which healed them. 
Where are the disciples who called him u rab- 
Tbi," and the women of Galilee who washed his 
feet with their tears, and the multitudes who 
spread their garments in the way and hailed 
him King \ Ah, they are all gone away, con- 
cealed wherever fear can find a hiding-place, or 
standing afar off in all the anguish of helpless 
love, or burying their sorrow, perhaps, alas! 
even their friendship, in the obscurity of the 
frenzied multitude. He is quite alone. All the 
golden links of the chain of friendship are brok- 
en ; and in the mid-sea of that spiritual loneli- 
ness which an outward tumult only intensifies, 
even as the light of the sun deepens the hue of 
the cloud, he yielded up his spirit, and the one 
Saviour among all masters passed under the do- 
minion of death. 

But the Cross was only the consummation of 
his death for the world. Even his advent as a 
helpless babe was a phase of death : he had 
begun to die, even then, for you and me. And 
all the stony way from Bethlehem to Calvary 
was a sense of dying. The outgoings of his 
vicarious heart were like the outgoings of a 



THE SACKIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 237 

perennial spring. Day by day, in the crowded 
streets and synagogues, night by night, on the 
lonely lake or mountain, he was putting off and 
sacrificing the very essentials of life, all the 
virtues and energies which constituted the great 
deep of his being. Oh, this whole earth was the 
death-bed of Jesus : and our sin made it all a bed 
of thorns ! 

And I would have you think of the sacrificial 
love of God to-day in a spirit of sacrifice unto 
Him For I am not here to bring certain strange 
things to your ears, but rather to remind you of 
that which ye have heard from the beginning. 
It is the same old love-story of the Cross, wooing 
you to the higher life. It is the same knocking 
at the door of the doubting heart. It is the 
same voice crying in the wilderness : " Prepare 
ye the way of the Lord." 

And we linger here under the shadow of the 
Cross, hoping that, peradventure, some burden- 
bearer will say : ' ' This Saviour of the world 
shall be my own Saviour, even now." Who will 
come to Him ? Who will accept him ? Who will 
surrender the heart to Him ? Nay, that is a Gos- 
pel which seems to ask for patronage, whereas 
the voice of pleading cometh not for himself, but 
for our own sakes. Who will venture to suppress 
the holy longings of the soul to go to such a Sa- 
viour ? Who can nerve his will to the rejection of 
so great a friend \ Who can withhold the heart 



238 THE SACRIFICIAL LOYE OF GOD. 

from this divine Master? For, indeed, " other 
foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, 
which is Jesus Christ. ' ' There is no other choice. 
There is no other hope. There is no salvation 
in any other. 

" When, marshalled on the nightly plain, 
The glittering hosts bestud the sky, 
One star alone, of all the train. 

Can fix the sinner's wandering eye. 

" Hark ! hark ! to God the chorus breaks 
From every star, from every gem, 
But one alone the Saviour speaks, 
It is the star of Bethlehem. 

" Once on the raging seas I rode ; 

The storm was loud, the night was dark ; 
The ocean yawned, and rudely blowed 

The winds that tossed my found'ring bark. 

" Deep horror then my vitals froze, 

Death-struck I ceased the tide to stem, 
When suddenly a star arose, 
It was the star of Bethlehem." 

All about thy storm-tossed bark, sinner, the 
light of that star is shining. Look upward and 
outward now for those stars of thy hope which 
are not set in the sky of the Gospel. Where are 
they ? Reason, conscience, observation, experi- 
ence ; social order, philosophy, government, 
law ; the friend, the teacher, the mother, the 
hero 1 Have they not gone down beneath the 
waves of the great sea of life ? Or do they linger 
still, as the only enchantments of the soul, until 



THE SACRIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 239 

the storms of to-morrow \ The storm in which the 
last earthly hope must disappear is already on 
the sea. Bnt the star of Bethlehem is shining 
on, the polar star of all spiritual hopes ; and 
when the broken lights of God are gone out 
forever, the star of Bethlehem will become the 
central sun of the spiritual universe, planting its 
axis of glory at last over the city of the redeem- 
ed. ' ' For the Lamb is the light thereof ; and 
they shall reign forever and ever." 

But we cannot consistently close the Bible 
upon this text without urging a related thought, 
namely, that the measure of the sacrificial love 
of God will become precisely the measure of the 
revelation of the wrath of God. The Ebal of 
judgment will by-and-by respond to the Gerizim 
of mercy. And you know that the law of tran- 
sition from love to wrath is foreshadowed in all 
Jiuman intercourse. If your love is rejected, and 
its tenderest overtures and its noblest offices 
are ignored and despised, that love gives place 
to righteous indignation, and the intensity of the 
one sentiment measures that of the opposite 
sentiment. So, as it seems to me, must God's 
sacrificial love for man turn into wrath against 
such as finally reject the plan of salvation offered 
in Jesus Christ. 

Imagine yourself standing on a promontory 
overlooking the Mississippi river. It is mid- 
summer. The banks are clothed in garments of 



240 THE SACRIFICIAL LOVE OF GOD. 

living green, while upon the broad stream ships 
of commerce are moving to and fro. But if you 
stand upon the same spot in mid- winter, all is 
changed. The bloom has faded from the land- 
scape ; river commerce has ceased, and from 
shore to shore lie the broad fields of ice and 
snow. And yet it is the same river, having the 
same fountains, being of the same substance. It 
is just the mid- summer scene, frozen by the 
breath of winter. So the sacrificial love of God 
may be frozen into wrath by the winter of our 
own rebellion. And it is not God who will con- 
demn ; but simply this unspeakable love of God, 
revealing itself, through our disobedience, as the 
wrath of God. All the privileges of Christian 
civilization, every overture of the Spirit of God, 
every promise of the inspired Word, every 
whisper of heavenly hope to the waiting soul, 
all these, if we turn away from them in a blind 
passion for the mammon of unrighteousness, 
will simply add to the awful weight of our con- 
demnation ; and that which is now the warm 
fountain of divine love will rise up before us in 
the day of judgment as an iceberg of wrath, 
filling the doorway of heaven against us forever. 
ISTow, while it is yet the summer time of God's 
love ; now, while Christ is the yearning Saviour, 
and not the stern judge, — now is the acceptable 
time. 



The Maid of Capernaum 

A FUNERAL PSALM. 



H 



OLD fast thy faith unclouded, 
Nor think her dead though shrouded j 

(Laugh not to scorn!) 
The damsel is but sleeping ; 
Her Lord the watch is keeping, 

Until the morn. 

Death's subtle spell is broken • 
The Christ of God hath spoken j 

And, evermore, 
Our lost ones are but sleeping ; 
Our Lord the watch is keeping, 

Till night is o'er. 



And when God's glad To-morrow 
Shall bring surcease of sorrow 

To them that weep, 
In brighter realms of being, 
We'll have the larger seeing, 

No more to sleep. 

16 (241) 



Spiritual Optics in the 
Art of Creed-making. 



PHIDIAS and Alkemedes were employed by 
the Athenian people to make each a statue 
of Athene, the people themselves to choose 
which of the two should surmount a lofty 
column dedicated to the goddess. The competi- 
tive statues being finished and exposed to public 
view, that of Alkemedes appeared in all respects 
the more excellent ; and as for the one pro- 
duced by Phidias, boldly wrought, with coarse, 
massive features, it was clamorously ridiculed. 
But Phidias simply said: " Let them be put 
where they beJong. This being done, alter- 
nately, the exquisite work of Alkemedes was so 
obscured as to destroy all its beauty and anima- 
tion, while that of Phidias, who had a know- 
ledge of optics, and had calculated the effect of 
distance and elevation, was manifest in all its 
perfections, and he was glorified. 

This scientific triumph of the Athenian sculp- 
tor-laureate is not without its suggestion, I am 

(242) 



SPIRITUAL OPTICS. 243 

persuaded, in the field of Christian thought ; 
albeit the doctrine of spiritual optics may be 
more perplexing to many minds than Teufels- 
drockJCs philosophy of clothes. 

And indeed this principle begins to have its 
application before we come to the ecclesiastical 
realm. Plato and Pythagoras, Archimedes and 
Copernicus, Aristotle and Bacon, those rugged 
way -marks of history ; flint-rocks by which the 
fires of human philosophy were kindled ; Con- 
fucius and Buddha, Socrates and Cato, those 
witnesses among the heathen ; Moses, Ezra, 
Elijah, Paul, Ambrose, Savonarola, Wycliffe, 
Luther, Wesley, those divinely- commissioned 
oracles of truth, — ah, how these men were alike 
ignored, buffeted and rejected ! And the people 
occupying those times which were pre-eminently 
the workshops of history, and standing close 
up to the brawny craftsmen, cried: '*Away 
with this crude handiwork with its bold lines 
and its burdensome proportions!" But the 
masters wrought cheerfully on, embracing pro- 
mises afar off, in conformity to the laws of 
spiritual sight : and the massive, fundamental 
things they produced took their own high 
places, pedestal] ed above the multitude, above 
the times, biding the judgments of history. 
History sees them where they belong, and they 
are glorified. 

And even Jesus awaited, in a great degree, 



244 SPIKITUAL OPTICS IN 

this exaltation of the future. It is never to be 
forgotten, indeed, that Christ and his doctrine 
were ridiculed and spurned more than any other 
master and master- work had been before him, 
precisely because the Gospel was foreordained 
to still higher elevation above the clamor of 
transitory things, above the cheers and counter- 
cheers of popular impulse. Moreover, Christ 
belongs, even now, so much to the future, so 
much to the higher plane of spiritual vision, that 
John Baptist's words have their message and 
meaning to the nineteenth century, as well as to 
the period of the incarnation : tk There standeth 
one among you whom ye know not." The yes- 
terdays, with all their tumultuous anxiety of 
Christian sentiment, have not been enough fully 
to discern Him, nor have the to-days, wdth all 
their subtle inquiry. Many a to-morrow must 
come, each with its special revelation, each with 
its advent of the glorified Saviour to individual 
souls, before mankind shall attain unto the meas- 
ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. 

But the Christian world is happily relearning 
that the Word of God is the one pedestal upon 
which every creed must stand, subjecting itself 
in that crucial light to the tribunal of Christian 
sentiment ; and that as Christ is the central 
figure of the spiritual world, he constitutes the 
one embodiment of the faith, the only true and 
eternal symbolism, the living creed, designed of 



THE ART OF CREED-MAKING. 245 

God to surmount and forever preoccupy the place 
of exaltation in the Christian Church. Where- 
fore, no creed can withstand the test of Chris- 
tian thought, much less of the crucible of the di- 
vine judgment, unless it is comprehensive enough 
to portray the fulness of Christ. How innumer- 
able the creeds that justify this conclusion ! In 
all ages of the Church, fragmentary theologians 
have promulgated creeds representing only & 
fragmentary principle, or disclosing only iso- 
lated features in the nature of Jesus. We should 
by no means entertain the sentiment that such 
creed-makers were color-blind, with reference 
to what the apostle calls "the many-colored 
wisdom of God ; " nor should we diagnose that 
they suffered from theological ophthalmia or 
ecclesiastical astigmatism : for if the natural eye 
itself is held to be defective as an optical instru- 
ment, how much less shall not the spiritual vis- 
ions of men be thought infallible ! And it is as 
true of the spiritual as of the natural vision, 
that opaque particles are likely to exist in the 
transparent media, a fixed prejudice, perhaps, 
or a selfish ambition, or an opinion, or a po 1 icy, 
which, casting deep shadows round about upon 
the soul, impress the spiritual judgment as 
being real, external objects, and so obstruct the 
view of those who desire most ardently to look 
only upon the Lamb of God. 
But, howsoever, the fragmentary creed-makers 



246 SPIEITUAL OPTICS IN 

have certainly been as busy as the comprehensive 
ones. Their monuments, whether temples or 
tombstones, are found by all the pathways of all 
the centuries of the Christian era. Ebionites, 
discerning only the human element in the nature 
of Jesus ; Patripassians, so absorbed in the 
contemplation of his divinity as to ignore the 
evidences of his humanity ; the ISTestorians, who 
were so curiously analytical in their theology as 
to reason away the essential unity of the person 
of Christ ; the JSTovatians, so jealous of the 
external righteousness of God as to be unmind- 
ful of the Saviour s compassion for sinners ; the 
Euchites, magnifying, beautifully as erroneous- 
ly, the mysticism of the nature of Jesus, in per- 
petual songs and prayers, — these and a thousand 
more, so studious of a text as to miss a Gospel, 
so attentive to a sacrament as to lose sight of a 
Saviour, so engaged with symbols as to count 
them for substance, have taken their detached 
truths and proclaimed them for creeds. And 
the people, — for the people discern the beauti- 
ful, always, more readily than the true — by 
coteries, or communities, or nations, or world- 
wide epochs, have taken these Gospelettes in 
their zealous embrace, set them over against the 
highways, and cried: "Lo, here!" or, " Lo, 
there!" But when these short-sighted work- 
men with their master-pieces have been put 
where they belong, high in the light of God's 



THE AET OF CREED-MAKING. 247 

Word, and face to face with him in whom 
dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily, 
the illusions which attend an artificial field of 
vision have been dispelled, the limited perspec- 
tive of the human workshop has given place to 
the sky-lines of a spiritual world ; and Christian 
sentiment finally discerns that while Jesus him- 
self is only beautified and glorified by his exal- 
tation, the creeds which borrow so little from 
Him as to leave the world in the dark, as the 
stars, although reflecting the glory of the sun, 
cannot dispel the night, — these creeds, like the 
exquisite Athene of Alkemedes, have lost, in 
being lifted up, all their original beauty and 
animation. Who will condemn the creeds, 
therefore, or embrace them, or pass any final 
judgment upon them, while they are yet in the 
work-shops or by the wayside % Let them be 
put where they belong ! Peradventure the sym- 
bol we think the most grotesque, or the most 
fragmentary, embodies a new phase of Gospel 
fulness, and will bear to be lifted nearer to the 
Apostles' Creed than we have allowed it pious 
to believe. Peradventure there are some cher- 
ished products of creed-making now considered 
exquisitely orthodox, which, lifted up a little 
higher, would excite the righteous indignation 
of the very sectaries who welcomed the test : for 
do we not recall that even the triumph of image- 
worship, in the Council of Constantinople, was 



248 SPIKITUAL OPTICS IN 

celebrated by the Greek Christians as the 
u Feast of Orthodoxy " % Let them be put where 
they belong ! 

At a public fair, long ago, a merchant dis- 
played the portraits of men all famous in their 
several callings, and, as the central figure of the 
group, a picture of Christ. Finally the purchas- 
ers came, the soldier buying his Caesar, the law- 
yer his Justinian, the physician his Galen, the 
philosopher his Aristotle, the poet his Virgil, the 
orator his Cicero, and the divine his Augustine ; 
every one after the addictions of his own heart. 
The picture of the Saviour remained until 
the poorest chapman of all had come, who had 
only enough money to reach the price at which 
the portrait was held. But he joyfully gave 
his all, saying: "Now that every one has 
taken awiiy his god, let me also have mine." 
We have learned that the Saviour comes 
much nearer to human hearts than art can 
bring him, but if we were to speak from the 
stand-point of that picture-worshipping age, 
should we not condemn the clergyman most of 
all 1 For while the men of exclusively secular 
callings might have been expected to prefer 
secular heroes, the preacher, in thinking of 
Augustine, looked along that line of spiritual 
vision where Jesus himself was, where Jesus 
was supreme, so that he preferred the subject,, 
even in the very presence-chamber of the King. 



THE AET OF CEEED-MAKING. 249 

And that incident may imperfectly illustrate the 
vast, subtle responsibility which rests upon the 
creed-makers, and upon those who in any way 
give direction to popular Christian sentiment. 
The multitudes are preoccupied with secular 
affairs, having little time for the thoughtful 
discrimination of theological truths ; but their 
perceptions are very keen and their conclusions 
are quickly formed. And when they turn aside to 
spiritual things, inasmuch as it is simply because 
they are hungering after righteousness, their 
spiritual tastes are very trustworthy. Wherefore, 
it requires something more than a mere human 
creed to win the people of to-day from their 
more vital human aims and interests ; something 
more than an Augustine to win them from their 
Csesars ; something more than an apostle to 
draw them away from their masters. 

And may it be that any of the creed-makers, 
or creed-guardians, of to-day, are preferring 
some beloved disciple to the all-loving Master ? 
Is there any subtle, unconscious way in which 
we divide the household of faith into separate 
apartments, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, 
Anglican ; and wherein Calvin, Menno, Wesley 
and Cranmer, are the objects of a semi- idolatrous 
reverence, like that of the old Manichseans for 
their Manes ? God forbid ! 

And yet we must say of our own, as of all 
symbols, let them be put where they belong, 



250 SPIRITUAL OPTICS. 

and whatever does not measure, in its corre- 
sponding parts, fully up to the heavenly pro- 
portions of the nature of Jesus, let it be melted 
away, or shamed into oblivion, by the glory of 
His presence. For Christ himself is the integral 
creed, the unwritten, the living, the life-diffus- 
ing creed. He is all and in all. He alone is the 
everlasting Yea. The one legitimate purpose of 
the sect is to promulgate the Gospel, to proclaim 
Jesus in his fulness ; while the only apology for 
a multiplicity of creeds is, the recognized fact 
that the Gospel may be more effectually repre- 
sented to the world, at the present stage of 
spiritual development, through different phases 
and attributes of the truth ; or, a specific state- 
ment of belief may be necessitated by the pro- 
mulgation of a specific error, the defensive or 
aggressive opposition to that error finally 
developing a distinct sect. But the true creed is 
one which never ceases to say with John the 
Baptist: " He must increase, but I must de- 



As to the New Theology, 



AND it is to this universal creed-test that we 
must submit the so-called new theology : 
' k for if this counsel or this work be of men, it 
will be overthrown." It will stand according 
to the measure of its Christlikeness. 

The distinctive controversies in the field of 
Christian theology have been far less numerous 
than the nomenclature of theology would indi- 
cate ; and by no means as numerous as the 
adversaries of the faith are glad to believe and 
swift to proclaim. Controversies in theology 
return upon the Church in cycles, almost as 
regularly as the holidays of a year, or the 
eclipses of a century, questions being agitated, 
debated, settled in council, crystalized in a creed, 
or forgotten, only to recur in another and per- 
haps remote epoch, involving the same essential 
points of dispute, but having lost their identity 
to the people in a new garb of phraseology from 
the word -mills of the schools. The present 
movement of thought is not a departure from 

(251) 



252 AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

history in this respect, I am convinced ; and it 
would perhaps be more proper to call it the 
renascent, rather than the new, theology. 

Now let ns recall, in as brief and comprehen- 
sive a way as possible, the questions which, 
polemic theology has bequeathed to us : — Was 
the Incarnation contingent upon sin, or would 
God have manifested himself to a world without 
sin in the person of a Messiah without suffering I 
And ^the incarnation was contingent upon sin, 
was that sin more supremely the original dis- 
obedience of Adam, or was it more supremely 
the accountable sin of the individual ? Was it 
preponderantly generic, or preponderantly bio- 
graphical? 

Again : Is there any guardian attribute in the 
nature of G-od \ And, presupposing an affirma- 
tive answer to the main question, may the Chris- 
tian philosopher venture an opinion as to just 
which of these attributes subordinates the 
others % 

Again : Did the person of Jesus so compre- 
hend the elements of two distinct natures, that 
there was at once a human personality and a 
divine personality, his consciousness belonging 
to the human nature when hunger, thirst, weari- 
ness, any human want or suffering, came upon 
him, and to the divine nature when performing 
messianic offices, and in communion with the 
Father \ Or did the divine ■ essence and the 



AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 253 

human element so interpenetrate each other as 
to give his nature all the unity of a single per- 
sonality ? 

Again : Is the punishment of sin to be justi- 
fied through the will of God, as an efficient 
cause, or through the righteousness of God \ 
And as to heathen peoples, are they uncondition- 
ally lost ; or may they be unconsciouly saved, 
through holy yearning after the truth, not 
knowing the historic Christ, but possessing " the 
essential Christ?" Or, finally, is there pro- 
bation after death ? 

Now, let us observe, briefly, the answer of the 
"new theology" to these questions, all of which 
lie within or at the threshold of these three 
fields of inquiry, namely, as to the person of 
Christ, as to the Atonement, and as to the 
appointed day of consummation and of Judg- 
ment. 

Respecting the person of Christ, this theolog- 
ical Renaissance, and especially the "Progres- 
sive Orthodoxy" expounded by the men of 
Andover, will prove very helpful, perhaps, even 
to those who welcome the new movement with 
the severest reserve. The men of Andover, al- 
beit they are theological professors, belong 
nevertheless to what may be called the pastoral, 
as distinguished from the professorial, school 
of criticism. The German school led by Dorner, 
and which has open apologists if not adherents 



254 AS TO THE JS"EW THEOLOGY. 

in Scotland and America, is pre-eminently the 
professorial school of the new theology. One 
may venture this distinction, howsoever, and 
may then say that, as to the person of Christ, 
this pastoral school has certainly made a sincere 
and valuable contribution to the philosophy of 
the Truth. 

The Gospel is Christ ocen trie ; and Christ the 
substance, the great reality of the Gospel, is a 
present, living fact, as well as a historical fact. 
His humanity was unique in its universality as 
well as in its union with the Father. His hu- 
manity looked out toward all men, like the hun- 
dred-gated Thebes, and yet whatever door might 
open in that wondrous nature, there was abso- 
lute perfection. He possessed an individuality 
made up of universals. He was the Word made 
flesh, and the flesh made perfect. In the mys- 
terious unity of his nature, He embodied God as 
person, and revealed God as person to the 
human family. Never simply divine, never 
merely human, He was the God-man. His 
divine nature was God realizing his love toward 
man ; His human nature was the realization of 
man's ideal when baptized with love toward 
God. And He is a living Saviour, the same 
yesterday, to day, and forever. He is the only 
head of the Church ; the tribune of the people 
before the throne of God ; humanity's crown. 
Thus He bestows himself, in all the offices of 



AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 255 

his Messiahship, in all the elements of his 
wondrous nature, upon all them that believe. 

These are fragmentary statements of a great 
truth, which is strongly emphasized by the 
pastoral, orthodox school of the new theology, 
the men of Andover truly saying that a theology 
which is not Christocentric is like a Ptolemaic 
astronomy ; it is out of true relation to the 
earth and the heavens, to God and his universe. 

The new theology emphasizes the ethical 
rather than the vicarious results of the Atone- 
ment, although striving, withal, not to obscure 
the meaning of Gethsemane and the Cross. The 
Atonement, rather than in the light of a substitu- 
tion, is here represented as an increment to the 
sum of moral wealth, which should make the 
world so rich in righteousness, the righteous- 
ness of Christ, as to cause God to hide his face 
from the absolute spiritual poverty of mankind. 
That the will of God is directed by the reason of 
God, rooted in righteousness ; that all sin is 
irrational and therefore absurd ; that the results 
of sin are a part of the ethical personality, and 
so, personal merit and demerit cannot be trans- 
ferred from one to another, though, on the other 
hand, the Atonement establishes a communism 
of suffering, a communism of destiny, between 
Christ and believing man ; that Christ brings 
God the person in communion with mankind by 
putting on humanity and giving himself to the 



256 AS TO THE 1SEW THEOLOGY. 

world as a divine possession ; that Christ was 
not only God's gift to man, expressive of God's 
love, bnt that once possessed by man, through 
faith, He becomes a gift from man to God, as 
expressive of repentance and atonement ; that 
the race is not only richer in reality, with Christ 
for the central figure of its history, but vastly 
richer in all spiritual possibilities, being not 
only clothed upon with the righteousness of 
Christ, but having in and through Jesus alone 
the ability truly to repent and believe, and hav- 
ing greater opportunity, greater capacity, for all 
spiritual wealth-creation, — such is perhaps as 
just a resume of the teaching of the men of 
Andover, on the point in question, as one can 
give in so few words. But while there is no 
difficulty in accepting the doctrine of Christ's 
universal relations, or even that wildly beauti- 
ful cosmo-Christology of Dorner, in which he 
conceives that this planet may be only the 
Bethlehem of the universe, that Christ may 
have only begun here a messianic pilgrimage to 
many sinful worlds ; yet the view that the In- 
carnation was not contingent upon sin, that a 
sinless world should have needed a Messiah, is 
certainly bewildering, if not repugnant, to 
Christian faith. To say that sin may actually 
have delayed the historical appearance of the 
Redeemer, is equivalent to saying that the man- 
ifestations of God are inversely as the needs of 



AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 257 

man. Such a view makes God little more than 
the prisoner of sin. 

The men of Andover assume that Christ's 
office, in the case of a sinless world, would have 
"been to reveal a knowledge of God, and to bring 
mankind nearer to Him. Ignorance of God, 
however, is simply the result of separation from 
God, and that separation is the legitimate conse- 
quence of sin. And if the primary cause, sin, 
were eliminated, the effects, separation from 
God and ignorance of God, would become in- 
supposable. In a word, the men of Andover 
would seem to have presupposed the absence of 
a certain cause, and then proceeded to build a 
philosophical theory on a hypothetical sequence 
which that cause alone could sufficiently ex- 
plain. 

To one shipwrecked in mid-ocean, an ap- 
proaching sail would doubtless be the most 
beautiful sight possible. But if this earth had 
no tumultuous seas or navigable streams, a craft 
as fair as Cleopatra 5 s on the Cydnus would have 
no significance. Men might indeed say, " It is 
very beautiful." But they would instantly add : 
"What is it for?" If there had been no sin, 
communion with God would have been unbro- 
ken ; every man would have enjoyed for himself 
a theochristic baptism ; all men would have 
occupied the same spiritual household with 
Jesus, and God would never have been far off 

17 



258 AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

and unknown. It is only just to assume that if 
there had been no sin, men would have been 
always the trusted friends of God, welcomed 
into the counsel-chambers of the King, or hear- 
ing His voice among the trees of the Gfarden. 

In Eschatology, the oracle of the new theology 
is Dorner, whom the men of Andover follow in 
this domain most closely, if not unquestioningly. 
And as to the basis of the final Judgment, 
Dorner' s view is evidently inspired by the loftiest 
faith ; while his entire philosophy, be it cheer- 
fully said, is most refreshing for its exaltation 
of Christianity as the universal law, and its 
exaltation of the Bible as the authoritative and 
infallible record of that law. Dorner' s theory 
of the principle of the Judgment is found in the 
declaration that God has his unchangeableness 
in and through his ethical nature, from which 
he cannot and will not fall. But this righteous- 
ness, it is added, is grounded in love. " Even 
knowledge," says Dorner, "is perfect in God 
first through love : all in God is for love." 

But when Dorner, and, closely following him, 
the men of Andover, apply this principle to the 
related question of the salvation of the heathen, 
they of course repel from following after them a 
great many who could perhaps reconcile the 
fundamentals of the system with a sound pro- 
gressive orthodoxy. Dorner and his disciples 
conclude that this unchangeable ethical nature 



AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 259 

of God will keep back the final word of justice 
and judgment from the departed heathen, until 
Christ may be preached to them. " Those who 
have the Gospel while they are in the body are 
in the decisive period," say the men of Andover. 
"Neither Scripture nor the observed tendency of 
chara cter to become permanently fixed, especially 
under the Gospel, afford any reason to hope that 
a more favorable, or, indeed, any opportunity 
will be given after death. But for those who do 
not know God in Christ during the earthly life, 
it seems to us probable that the knowledge they 
need will be given after death. At the same 
time we are not as positive concerning the times, 
seasons or circumstances under which God will 
reveal himself in Christ, as we are that the prin- 
ciple is of universal application: that no man 
will be finally judged till he knows God in the 
sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that no man will 
be hopelessly condemned except for the wilful 
and final rejection of Christ." 

It is held by the apostles of the u progressive 
orthodoxy," in brief, that the heathen are in 
merely a provisional state of condemnation, 
the final decision against them being kept 
in abeyance until they shall have made an 
enlightened choice ; that the definitive worth 
and the final destiny of the individual are 
bound to his personal decision ; that the good 
must ethically be placed before the spiritual 



260 AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 

sight of all men in its full clearness and 
truth, not simply as the voice of conscience, or 
as an ordinance, but in its brightest and most 
attractive form, as the personal love, in order 
that the decision for or against it may receive its 
decisive importance ; and that " there must be 
full freedom of decision from out one's own 
proper personality." Rejecting, therefore, the 
theory of unconscious salvation, through a Christ 
possessed but unknown, and ignoring the doc- 
trine of the unconditional loss of the heathen, 
Dorner and his disciples believe in a Gospel to the 
spirits which are in prison, and that, even after 
death, those who accept Christ, being in their first 
knowledge of him, may quit the eternal prison 
house of the wrath of God, and obtain a welcome 
entrance into the House of many mansions. Bun- 
yan dreamed that there is a path to hell, even 
from the very gates of Heaven. Dorner' s escha- 
tology recognizes this pathway, too : but while 
the teacher of the seventeenth century, a great 
Puritan, saw it only as a path of descent, this 
liberal theologian of the nineteenth century, in- 
fluenced rather more by German philosophy than 
by anything like English puritanism, discerns 
this path as a possible way of escape from eternal 
punishment, of ascent to eternal happiness. 

The burden of proof doubtless rests upon those 
who affirm the theory of probation after death ; 
for that affirmation, standing as it does against 



AS TO THE NEW THEOLOGY. 261 

the Christian sentiment and doctrine and symbol- 
ism of centuries, becomes intrinsically the nega- 
tion of one of the dogmas of the faith. 

We can do nothing, however, at once so safe 
and reasonable, as to put this new theology 
where it belongs, high in the crucial light of 
God's Word, that it may be spiritually dis- 
cerned. If it has lines bold and Biblical enough 
for the outdoor perspective of the Christian 
world, if it has the ligaments of the truth, the 
light will make it manifest. If it is a theological 
dwarf, the light will melt it away. And perhaps 
the greatest ultimate influence of this movement 
will be, to quicken the independent, prayerful 
study of the Bible. Men will turn from the 
creeds to the Book, from the schools to the 
Master, from all these floating islands in a stormy 
sea to the one Rock of wisdom and of salvation. 
Yea, let us look to Christ as the Alpha and the 
Omego of our love and faith. He is Jesus the 
only. He alone is substance. All else is pro- 
phecy, or symbol, or emanation. He alone shall 
endure, as the living Word, when the fashion of 
this world passeth away : and we shall live also, 
if He, the living Word, abideth in us. "For all 
flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man — all 
human handiwork, institutions, systems, creeds 
— as the flower of the grass. The grass wither- 
eth, and the flower thereof falleth away : but 
the Word of the Lord endure th forever." 



Shakespeare. 



o 



NE royal spring, in youth's warm zone, 

A flower grew wondrous fine. 

Because it grew where I had sown, 

I thought the flower was mine. 



*n' 



u Of all the flowers that bloom/ 7 I cried, 
" Sweet rose or lily fair, 
What cherished spot on earth beside, 
Can boast a flower so rare V 

Then, in my gladsome vanity, 
I hailed the passing crowd. 
But one, my neighbor, laughed at me : 
" foolish heart, and proud, 

The flower thou thinkest rare and new, 
Of thine own wisdom grown, 

In matchless form on Avon grew, 
Some hundred summers flown V 9 
(262) 



- SHAKESPEARE. 263 

My laughing neighbor kept a bower, 

Whose fame colossal stood : 
And there/' said he, " through sun and shower, 

All things grow fair and good. 

" But one there is I cherish most ; 
It stands with glory crowned. 
Its glory, all the people's boast, 
Has flashed the world around !" 

Behold," all laughter, 1 replied, 
11 This bloomed on Avon's shore ; 
And since it grew have blushed and died 
A thousand moons and more ! 

O pride of Avon, well of song, 

Far-flowing, rich and free, 
What myriad natures, weak and strong, 

Have plucked a crown from thee ! 



The Distribution of 
Labor. 



AN account rather too characteristic of this 
feverish age comes from Berlin, telling us 
all about the effort of a crank, or egomaniac, to 
force his way into the palace of Emperor Wil- 
liam. "You must let me go," he said. "I 
have been appointed Prince of Bulgaria by an 
angel with glittering robes. The angel said to 
me: 'Now get thee unto the German Kaiser, 
thou fourth God-head, and tell him thy name is 
Augustus, Prince of Bulgaria. Joy and glad- 
ness shalt thou bring into the world, because 
thou hast power to banish poverty.' " 

The vagaries of so intense a visionary have no 
immediate logical connection with the problems 
of the laboring world, except through the great 
resemblance they bear to many of the theories 
and philosophies which are now abroad on the 
subject. For is there not, in certain of them, 
while the same worthy purpose, also the same 
incoherency of sentiment, the same indifference 

(264) 



THE DISTRIBUTION" OF LABOR. 265 

or blindness to the essential interdependence of 
principles, the same failure to recognize that 
ideals are circumscribed by realities, the same 
oracular, fragmentary way of proclaiming the 
great, ultimate ends of human society? The 
narrowest local agitator, no less than the broad- 
est social economist, indeed, thinks himself 
commissioned to reveal to the work- day world 
the one path of progress from poverty ; and 
even nihilism, the subtlest and most grotesque 
of all the extremes of socialism, fancies to itself 
a vision of angels, and hears a voice, saying : 
u Joy and gladness shalt thou bring into the 
world, because thou hast power to banish 
poverty." 

A conventional treatise on political economy 
would take for its starting-point the science of 
the creation and distribution of wealth. But, 
defining wealth as the aggregate of all things 
which go to supply the wants or gratify the 
desires of man, it becomes important to the 
development of the single idea under considera- 
tion here, to distinguish the wealth which labor 
produces for the employer, from that which is 
consumed by the laborer himself. The one 
objective of labor, the only incentive to labor, is 
comprised in what the laborer gets and enjoys 
in compensation for his work. What this labor 
produces for the employer, so far as the master- 
motive of the laborer goes, is merely an in- 



266 THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 

cidental result. "Real wages, " says Professor 
Walker, "are the remuneration of the hired 
laborer as reduced to the necessaries, comforts 
or luxuries of life. These are what the laborer 
works for ; these are truly his wages. The 
money he receives under his contract with 
his employer is only a means to that end, some- 
times, as it proves, a most delusive means." 
And real may differ from nominal wages, as he 
proceeds to show, in many ways : through vari- 
ations in the purchase-power of money, as when 
coins of the same denomination contain varying 
quantities of the constituent metals, and when 
the discovery of gold or the circulation of paper 
money depreciates a national currency by 
unnaturally increasing its volume ; through 
variations in the form of payment, as when 
wages are received in merchandise at less or 
more than the market value ; through opportu- 
nity for extra earnings ; through greater or less 
regularity of employment ; and through longer 
or shorter duration of the laboring power. 

We are therefore to consider the distribution 
of labor with reference to that portion of wealth- 
creation which lies within the purpose of the 
laborer. The general result in profit and wages 
as commonly understood may not indeed be 
ignored ; but as the average laborer looks upon 
the whole subject as a mere bread-and-butter 
problem, and is comparatively indifferent to all 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 267 

the results of labor which do not contribute to 
its immediate object, the benefit of the toiler, it 
cannot be unprofitable to approach this specific 
branch of the subject from the wage-consumer's 
own standpoint. 

The territorial distribution of labor may be 
first considered. The most humiliating feature 
of slavery was perhaps that which denied to its 
victims the exercise of the migratory instincts. 
Compulsory service to the one master was prob- 
ably never so wounding to human sensibilities, 
never so degrading to human character, as com- 
pulsory residence in a prescribed place. And 
this territorial restriction upon the laborer was 
the one feature of servitude to which the slave- 
holding passion clung most tenaciously, and 
which slave-fostering governments have at- 
tempted to fasten upon the free laborer. The 
fourteenth century of the Christian era was too 
late a time for the compulsory gathering of great 
multitudes of workmen, kept together for public 
improvements, like cattle herded for the sham- 
bles; too late a day for any Rameses to build 
his pyramids, or any Che Hwang- te his Chinese 
wall. Yet even in this fourteenth Christian 
century, English law put its most stringent 
territorial restriction upon English workirjgmen. 
If laborers left their work and went into another 
county, process was to be issued to the sheriff 
to arrest and bring them back. A later statute 



268 THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 

enacted that any workman absenting himself 
from his service and going into another town or 
county, should be treated as an out -aw; and im- 
prisonment was to follow until he had pledged 
himself to the requirements of the law, and 
made satisfaction to the employer. And if the 
party aggrieved so required, the offender was 
to be burnt in the forehead wuth the letter F, "in 
token of his falsity." Under Richard II., the 
law was so far modified that a letter patent 
under the king's seal entitled the holder to en- 
gage in work outside his own county or hun- 
dred, the time of his departure and return, how- 
ever, being definitely prescribed. And as the 
path of progress from this restrictive legislation 
was very slow of ascent, often, indeed, meeting 
an adverse sentiment and returning upon itself, 
we cannot fail to see that the wage worker did 
not come into real liberty until very recent 
times. But the territorial movements of labor 
now proceed under natural conditions, and we 
may consider the facts and influences which 
contribute to, or hinder, the operation of the 
law of distribution. Let us approach the mat- 
ter by a comparative view of the wages paid for 
like services in different countries. Taking those 
occupations which may be called cosmopolitan, 
as being pursued in almost every civilized na- 
tion, we find that wages in the old world describe 
a receding series, beginning with Great Britain 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 269 

as paying the highest of all. In that country, 
taking Bradford and Glasgow as representative 
towns, railroad employes receive from eighty 
cents a day for switchmen to $1.30 a day for 
conductors; blacksmiths, $7.78 a week; masons, 
■$7.29 a week; carpenters, $4.86 a week; colliers, 
$1.34 a day ; bankmen, 81 cents a day ; laborers, 
$4.86 a week ; household servants, $79 a year. 
In France : Railway conductors, $30 a month ; 
brakemen, $22 a month ; household servants, 
female, $96 a year, male, $1 70 a year ; farm- 
hands, $53 to $120 a year. In Germany : Rail- 
way conductors, $5.71 a week ; engineers, $6.60 
a week ; brakemen, $3.09 a week ; masons, $2.14 
a week ; carpenters, $2.86 to $3.57 a week ; black- 
smiths, $3.57 to $4.76 a week ; household servants, 
$45 a year ; farm hands, 40 cents a day. In Spain : 
Railway switchmen, $3.04 a week; brakemen, 
$3.38 a week ; conductors, $6.50 a week ; farm 
hands, 19 cents a day ; household servants, $3.86 
a month ; coachmen, $21 a month ; vineyard 
laborers, 67 cents a day. In Russia : Railway 
engineers, $96 a month ; passenger guards, 
$19.20 a month ; blacksmiths, $3.84 per week ; 
masons, $4.32 a week ; carpenters, $4.80 a week ; 
laborers, $2.88 a week. In Italy : Railway 
conductors, $18 a month ; brakemen, $12.55 a 
month ; switchmen, $11.58 ; carpenters, 77 cents 
a day ; blacksmiths, 67 cents a day ; masons, 61 
cents a day ; household servants, $2.32 a month; 



270 THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 

farm hands, $3.89 a week. In Asia (Ceylon) : 
blacksmiths, $2.50 a week ; carpenters, $1.60 a 
week ; hod-carriers, 85 cents a week ; farm 
hands, 12 cents a day, without board ; hatters, 
40 cents a week. 

When we go back and think of wages in 
America, so far exceeding even those in England, 
the contrast becomes all the more vivid. It is 
interesting to note, indeed, that daily wages in 
America ligure well up, especially in the building- 
crafts, to the weekly wages in Asia, or even in 
Italy and Russia. This disparity is of course 
reduced by certain modifying circumstances ; as, 
for example, by the difference in the cost of liv- 
ing in different countries, and the varied working 
capacities of men : however, it transpires not in- 
frequently that what the apologists of European 
enterprise call a difference in the cost of living, 
amounts simply to a difference in the living it- 
self, the ill-paid Europeans having but little 
variety of food, and houses which correspond to 
those which an English statesman describes by 
saying, that " dirt and disrepair, darkness that 
may be felt, odors that may be handled, and 
faintness that can hardly be resisted, hold des- 
potic rule in these dens of despair." As to the 
working capacities of men of different nations, 
there is doubtless an equalizing truth in it. The 
testimony of Brassey, the great railroad con- 
structor, is a testimony based upon experience 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 271 

in the employment of men, in England, France, 
Saxony, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, 
Spain, Canada, Syria, Persia and India, to the 
aggregate of 80,000 men ; and Mr. Brassey testi- 
fies that in India, although laborers can be hired 
at from .00 cents to .14 cents a day, the cost of 
railroad work is nevertheless about the same as 
in England. It is claimed, moreover, that the 
working capacity of an Englishmen is to that of 
.a Frenchman as ^Ye to three. 

But these qualifying circumstances are only 
calculated to strengthen the conviction that the 
law of the distribution of labor is not in heal thy 
operation. If the Asiatic could be induced to 
emigrate to one of the most enterprising coun- 
tries of Europe, or to America, the physical and 
social influence of the new environment, improved 
instrumentalities, an increase of the comforts of 
life, and, above all, that subtle magnetism of civ- 
ilization which would flow from contact with 
European laborers, — by such influences as these, 
his working capacity would develop very rapid- 
ly, and while developing a xaste for the luxuries 
of a complex society, he would command wages 
sufficient to gratify them. We take the case of 
the East Indian here, because his attachment to 
his own country is particularly strong. The law 
of the distribution of labor becomes inoperative 
for any amelioration of his social state by reason 
of his ethnical passion, which is rooted in relig- 



272 THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 

ious prejudice. And although his labor com- 
mands but some .06 cents a day, in prosperous 
times, and notwithstanding the regular recurrence 
of a famine about every five years, he is apparently 
" unconscious of any impulse to emigration." 
The fact that wages are lower in India than in 
any other country under Christian influence, 
needs no further explanation than this immobil- 
ity of her laboring classes. Interspersion is the 
only natural remedy, whether it comes by a de- 
gree of emigration to other lands, or of immigra- 
tion of foreigners. It may be accepted, indeed, 
as having been demonstrated by many lines of 
history, that the standard of wages throughout 
the world increases directly as the interspersion 
of the laboring classes of different nations. The 
policy of excluding foreign workmen for the os- 
tensible protection of native workmen, militates, 
ultimately, against the native workmen them- 
selves ; for every act of exclusiveness in a na- 
tion simply demonstrates that the self-seeking 
spirit is uppermost there. And if that spirit 
has prevailed, even through the influence of la- 
bor, against the fellow-toilers of other lands, it 
will inevitably prevail at last, through the more 
potent influence of capital, against the native 
workingmen. Isolation is the opportunity of 
oppression. The hopes of the work-day world 
are, interspersion and intercommunion. 

And to this end no hegira is necessary. It is 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOE. 273 

often largely realized, lias been slightly realized 
even in India itself, by the incidental associa- 
tions of commerce. This influence is quite 
clearly shown in the nnnatnral contrast between 
urban and rural wages, covering the same class- 
es of service, in Russia and Italy. In the cities, 
where foreigners have introduced at once the 
knowledge requisite to skilled labor, and infor- 
mation as to how the more advanced civilization 
remunerates labor, the natives are paid, in some 
instances, four-fold what they receive for the 
same class and quality of work in the adjacent 
rural districts. 

Interspersion would result in benefit to work- 
ingmen in no more emphatic way than by the 
intellectual and moral elevation it is likely to 
produce. Take the testimony of an American 
consul at Glasgow, concerning the laborers in 
that vicinity. *' That a fair proportion of them 
are steady and trustworthy is certain," he says ; 
"but it has been demonstrated on the Clyde 
that large wages thoroughly demoralize work- 
men." If that observation at Glasgow were 
taken as demonstrating as much as the consul 
declares, the outlook for the world of work 
would be very sad indeed. Experience may 
have shown that, on the Clyde, "large wages 
thoroughly demoralize workmen:" but that 
can not be logically magnified into a general 
proposition, nor treasured up against the typical 

18 



274 THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOE. 

workingman in any way. It demonstrates, 
rather, that workmen on the Clyde mnst be 
peculiarly deficient ri moral ballast ; that they 
have lived too long their life of voluntary social 
ostracism ; that they have rebreathed their own 
atmosphere until it contains more poison than 
vitality ; and that, on the whole, they need the 
interspersion of better examples among them, 
of men of lofty purpose, temperate desires, fru- 
gal habits, manly principles. 

By the industrial distribution of labor we 
mean such an adjustment of individual tastes 
and capabilities to the demands of the several 
trades and industries, as to make the supply of 
labor proportionately great, and its compensa- 
tion proportionately just, in them all. In the 
most highly civilized countries, and especially 
in America, where the laboring classes are per- 
haps more intelligent and more privileged than 
in any other country, this feature of the law of 
distribution is largely self-operative. The -let- 
alone principle is sufficient. And the United 
States Labor Bureau's report for 1886, though 
detailing the wages of many representative 
establishments, shows nothing more than a 
reasonable disparity between the wages of the 
several occupations. But when we turn to those 
localities where labor is destitute of the intelli- 
gence necessary to combination, where the lab- 
orer is subject to all the humiliations that grow 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 275 

out of the isolation of ignorance, in such regions 
we find the greatest disproportion between the 
wages of the different classes of workmen. 
Take, for example, the case of the poor shep- 
herd in the Roman Champagna. He is only a 
few miles from the city of Rome ; but so 
illiterate is he, so low in the scale of intelligence, 
that he is as absolutely and completely shut out 
from the light of civilization, as if he were 
hidden in the darkest recess of the Catacombs 
above which he keeps his master's flock. His 
employer therefore has no difficulty in securing 
this wretched man's services at two cents a day, 
in addition to his simple diet of bread and oil ; 
while his aggregate yearly earnings of $7.30 
suffice for the meagre clothing he requ ires. But 
in the same region there lives an ordinary 
stone-cutter who receives $150.00 a year ; and is 
enabled to supplement his daily bread with the 
Italian laborers luxuries, such as coffee, milk, 
macaroni, onions and cheese. Now do we not 
see that intelligent intercourse between the 
shepherd and the stone-cutter would inevitably 
lead to something like an adjustment, and 
modify this great inequality \ Or if the poor 
shepherd should so much as go to Rome, or 
should so much as get a descriptive letter from 
a pioneer friend in the new world, or should so 
much as receive one visit from an apostle of the 
Knights of Labor, he would doubtless be stirred 



276 THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 

thereby with something like the passion of 
justice, and would demand a more reasonable 
compensation for his toil. 

That the lower class of laborers in foreign 
countries have no sense of the industrial distri- 
bution of labor, is shown by their manner of 
disposing themselves on emigrating to Ameri- 
ca. Instead of settling upon the unoccupied 
lands, as do the more intelligent foreigners, and 
assisting in the agricultural and mineral devel- 
opment of the great West, they congregate in 
the cities, and not only overreach the demands 
of enterprise, but create a sentiment against 
themselves among native and naturalized Amer- 
icans. It is largely to this ignorant tendency, 
we must attribute the fact that in the recent 
strike in New York city, for all the thousands 
who ceased work, idle thousands more applied 
for the vacant places. 

An ideal phase of this subject is what may be 
called the philanthropic distribution of labor. 
The operation of the principle in this sense 
would produce, as its most important effect, a 
genuine distinction between the wage-earning 
class and the capitalists. As the case now 
stands, the wage-earners and the proprietors are 
often identical ; and very frequently those who 
are not in the least dependent upon the fruit of 
their toil, enter the labor market in the most 
selfish competition with those who must work 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOE. 277 

or want. Too often, moreover, the standard of 
compensation for work is altogether determined 
"by those who are independent of their wages. 
In almost any commnnity contiguous to a great 
city, for example, we find housewives who en- 
gage to do sewing for metropolitan merchants 
or contractors, finding time to perform this 
work in the interval of domestic duties. They 
have good homes, in many instances, consider- 
ate husbands, bountiful tables, and perhaps 
cheerful balances in the savings bank ; but hav- 
ing acquired habits of industry and frugality, 
they count it a virtue to seek employment for 
leisure hours. When the price of the work 
comes to be fixed, however, they are by no 
means exacting. Working from choice rather 
than from necessity, working for a pocket-book 
surplus, or with reference to some feminine 
luxury or feminine fancy, they never think of 
their poor sisters in the tumultuous city who 
hold their very existence in the points of their 
needles. And so these independent, suburban 
seamstresses agree to make shirts at 40 cents a 
dozen, or pantaloons at from 8 cents to J 3 cents 
a pair, fixing thereby an arbitrary standard of 
compensation for such work. For when the 
wily contractor comes to the seamstress who is 
dependent from day to day upon the proceeds 
of the day's labor, he says, with commercial 
simplicity : "I can get this work done, else- 



278 THE DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR. 

where, at this figure ; and you must work at 
that price or not at all." 

There is of course no law by which those in 
independent circumstances can be forbidden to 
take the work which should, in justice, go to 
the wage-consumer, or restrain them from the 
unconscious injury of establishing a scale of 
wages for the poor. Such a matter is indeed 
beyond the province of legislation, as law-mak- 
ing would perhaps endanger the more general 
rights of the individual, in thus assuming the 
guardianship of a social class. But the philan- 
thropic distribution of labor would realize a great 
principle. It would call idle capital into busy 
enterprise from motives of pure benevolence. 
It would establish great industries in all lands, 
having for their supreme purpose the training 
of children to honest employments. It would 
fix a scale of wages having more reference to the 
necessities of the poorest laborers, than to the 
humor of the prosperous. It would substitute 
philosophy for force, and love for law, in the 
busiest sphere of human activities, fulfilling that 
sacred injunction which expresses the highest 
ideal of human society : " Look not every man 
upon his own things, but every man also upon 
the things of others." 



A Branch of the Vine. 



FIFTY-FIVE years ago, in the cities of Balti- 
more, Cincinnati and Lynchburg, Va., a 
number of clergymen and laymen were expelled 
from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Whether 
we speak of faith or conduct, these were all in 
"good standing ;" their only offence was the 
aggressive zeal with which they favored lay 
representation in the annual and general confer- 
ences. The expelled brethren, with their kin- 
dred, and those who followed them for opinion's 
sake, were at first congregated under a provis- 
ional government, with the name of "Associated 
Methodist Churches." But common ecclesiasti- 
cal views soon completed the evolution of a sect, 
and these ostracized Christians became the 
Methodist Protestant Church, the Constitu- 
tional Convention meeting on the second day 
of November, 1830. 

A younger member of the family of Metho- 
dism, this church was still in her infancy when 
that agitation began, the climax of which was 

(279 



280 A BRANCH OF THE VINE. 

only to be reached in the terrible crucible of a 
civil war. Dismemberment resulted to the 
churches. But the Methodist Protestants were 
among the first to outgrow the sectional animos- 
ities of the conflict, and the two branches, North 
and South, were happily reunited in 1877. The 
brief history of the church has been attended 
with an encouraging degree of prosperity, espec- 
ially toward the West and South, with Pitts- 
burg and Baltimore as the nuclei of denomina- 
tional strength, so that to-day there are one 
hundred and forty thousand Methodist Protes- 
tant communicants, served by fifteen hundred 
active ministers, and supporting three colleges, 
two schools of theology and five religious peri- 
odicals. But all that aside, the purpose of this 
article is to emphasize those features of polity 
and religious temperament, which essentially 
distinguish the Methodist Protestant from the 
Methodist Episcopal Church. 

It ought to be said in the beginning, however, 
that these two sects, the mother and the daughter, 
are now on very good terms with each other ; 
they have addressed themselves to a higher 
mission than that of keeping up a family quar- 
rel, and, therefore, the somewhat controversial 
tone of this article must be taken as necessitated 
by the nature of the subject, and by the non- 
accommodating nature of fact. Now the state- 
ments advanced in some quarters concerning our 



A BRANCH OF THE VINE. 281 

church, resolve themselves into the following 
syllogism : The Methodist Protestant Church 
was founded on the principle of lay representa- 
tion in church government ; the Methodist 
Episcopal Church has finally conceded the point 
in dispute and adopted lay representation ; 
therefore, the Methodist Protestant Church has 
compassed her mission, and has no further rea- 
son for being, — an argument which would break 
down on the conclusion, but for the reason that 
it breaks down before it gets there. If the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church should ever admit the 
laity to equal privileges with the clergy, there 
should yet be little reason for anticipating any 
resultant change in the constitutional polity of 
the church. Episcopacy, so far as it relates to 
Methodism, is self-constituted. It fastened 
itself upon the American churches against the 
vehement protests of John Wesley, and without 
the consent of the laity. Now this same Epis- 
copacy has occupied the uppermost seats for a 
hundred years. Always demonstratively jealous 
of power, it has naturally repelled the lovers of 
ecclesiastical liberty that were without ; at 
critical periods it has not hesitated to expel, 
those that were within, saying to all petitioners 
for a recognition of popular rights, ' ' We recog- 
nize no such rights, we comprehend no such 
privileges." This process of expulsion and 
repulsion, notwithstanding her truly success- 



282 A BKA^CH OF THE VINE. 

fill amalgamation of the people, has left to 
the Methodist Episcopal Church a conservative 
laity — a laity so weaned from their rights that 
they would hardly venture at this, the eleventh 
hour, to cut off the venerable graft of Episco- 
pacy. " Rooted in the olive-tree of Methodism 
by the growth of a century, it has become the 
ruling branch," they would say, "and, while 
our individuality may have been absorbed by 
this overshadowing priestcraft, yet we may con- 
sole ourselves with the consciousness of having 
contributed something, in our humble way> 
toward the fruit-bearing." 

This conservative spirit, and the laissez /aire 
policy growing out of it, are well illustrated in 
the matter of the presiding elders. The Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church is wonderfully out of 
patience with herself, as it would seem, for hav- 
ing presiding elders. And yet the presiding 
elders are retained ; partly, no doubt, from 
reverence for an institution so knit with the 
history of the church, and partly, perhaps, 
because the church foresees and dreads the diffi- 
culty of putting the complicated machinery 
together again without this particular wheeL 
Now, having the advantage of possession, and 
shielded by the inertia of a submissive spirit on 
the part of the laity, it should seem that the 
Clergy might have admitted laymen to a partici- 
pation in the government without manifesting 



A BRANCH OF THE VINE. 283 

the least sense of insecurity. On the contrary, 
however, they have put the following self- 
defensive restriction upon the General Confer- 
ence : " They" (the General Conference) " shall 
not alter any part or rule of our government, so 
as to do away with Episcopacy." And this 
restriction upon the General Conference, the 
only body admitting laymen, may not be re- 
moved without the concurrent recommendation 
of three-fourths of the members of the several 
annual conferences, which are composed entirely 
of ministers. That is as if a king should change 
his absolute monarchy into a republic, on the 
condition that the citizens of this republic should 
" not alter any part or rule of the government 
so as to do away with" his remaining abso^te 
monarch. James II. had no objection to a free 
Parliament, as long as the free Parliament and 
the people allowed him a free exercise of his 
u prerogative," and kept their hands off the 
army on Hounslow Heath. But the proposi- 
tion that the M. E. Church has adopted lay 
representation, is only true in a very qualified 
way. 

1. In the General Conference, meeting quad- 
rennially, only two lay delegates are admitted 
from each annual conference. The ministerial 
delegates consist of one member for every 
forty-five members of each annual conference : 
and when this basis of representation gives but 



284 A BRANCH OF THE VINE. 

one ministerial delegate to any annual confer- 
ence, it is provided that only one lay delegate 
may appear from that conference. From all the 
larger conferences, therefore, the ministry will 
have two or three, possibly fonr, representatives 
to every lay representative, while the studied 
care of a special proviso is taken, that this 
inequality shall not be rectified through the 
smaller conferences. This accomplishes, of 
course, the indisputable purpose of giving the 
clergy a great preponderance, u a good, working 
majority," in the General Conference. A desire 
to recognize the people as a ruling element in 
the Church would suggest and dictate, if not 
immediate equal representation, at least a com- 
mon basis of representation for the clergy and 
the laity, so that they should profit somewhat 
equally by the growth of the denomination. 

2. The laity have no representation in the 
annual conference. And the annual conference 
is not only the real administrative body of the 
Church, but is, moreover, the primary source of 
that sentiment which always precedes, and 
generally determines, disciplinary law. The 
General Conference will usually be found legis- 
lating on a line of policy marked out and pro- 
phesied by the preliminary discussions of the 
clergy in the several annual conferences. 

There is one custom operating through the 
annual conference, indeed, which may be called 



A BKANCH OF THE VINE. 285 

a species of lay representation. The large, 
metropolitan churches have acquired a language 
of signs : they make signs to the man they 
desire for pastor ; he and they unite in making 
signs to the bishop ; and, in this way, matters 
are often adjusted for the popular preachers and 
the large churches, long before the convening 
of the annual conference. But the difficulty 
with this deaf-and-dumb lay representation is, 
that it keeps up a most distracting and painful 
pantomine among the preachers, an unhajjpy 
solicitude about the future ; a method which 
must be all the more wounding to the spirits of 
those who despise it, because its adoption by 
the few has seemed to make it necessary to all. 

The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, be it cheerfully said, have been men of 
rare prudence, piety and wisdom ; men in whom 
their almost despotic authority has generally 
been concealed by the paternal moderation with 
which that authority has been exercised. And 
this happy fact will likely perpetuate itself 
as long as the itinerant ranks of the Church 
comprise men of the high order of intelli- 
gence and learning for which they are honored 
to-day. But Methodist Protestants believe in 
lay -rights as a religious principle ; and they are 
convinced that it is a poor compensation for the 
loss of these rights to soften, though it be even 
to gentleness, the tyranny by which they are 



286 A BRANCH OF THE VINE. 

taken away. The English people have learned 
to cling to their hard-won liberties nnder a mild 
Queen of the House of Brunswick, as well as 
under a John Plantagenet or a James Stuart. 

The design of this article is simply to empha- 
size that feature of denominational polity which 
most clearly distinguishes the Methodist Pro- 
testant Church from the Methodist Episcopal, 
and to justify that continued distinction as a 
sufficient reason for continued separation. But 
the individuality of the Methodist Protestant 
Church is not dependent upon lay representation 
alone: and while, in all the great symbols of 
the Christian faith, this sect corresponds to all 
the others called evangelical, embracing with 
them all the fulness of the Apostles' Creed, 
its elementary principles are designed to lay hold 
upon those specific rights and privileges the 
conservation of which history has shown to be 
essential to religious liberty. These elementary 
principles (a.) admit but one order in the min- 
istry of the Church, establishing presbyterial 
equality, as well as equality between the min- 
isters and the laymen : "The pastoral or min- 
isterial office and duties are of divine appoint- 
ment, and all elders in the Church of God are 
equal ; but ministers are forbidden to be lords 
over God's heritage, or to have dominion over 
the faith of the saints." (p.) They hold the 
Church to a basis which is pre-eminently Chris- 



A BRANCH OF THE VINE. 287 

tocentric and Biblical, as distinguished from 
everything traditional, ceremonial and anthro- 
pomorphic : " Christ is the only Head of the 
Church, and the Word of God the only rule of 
faith and conduct/' (c.) They proclaim and 
conserve the right of private judgment in 
matters of religion : " Every man has an inalien- 
able right to private judgment in matters of 
religion, and an equal right to express his 
opinion in any way which will not violate the 
laws of God or the rights of his fellow men." 
(d.) They guard most sacredly the privilege of 
communion with the people of God, relieving 
the matter of Church fellowship from every 
semblance of pastoral autocracy, and making it 
conditional only upon the substantial things of 
faith and piety: " Church trials should be 
conducted on Gospel principles only ; and no 
minister or member should be excommunicated 
except for immorality, the propagation of un- 
christian doctrines, or for the neglect of duties 
enjoined by the Word of God." (e.) They rec- 
ognize the integral nature of every society of 
believers in Jesus Christ ; recognize such society, 
when assembled for religious worship, as a Chris- 
tian church of divine institution, vesting therein 
the right of local self-government with the exclu- 
sive right of property in their houses of worship, 
and in whatever material possessions their own 
labor and sacrifice may have gotten them. 



288 A BRANCH OF THE VINE. 

Finally, the Methodist Protestant Church has 
a separate history with its tender memories and 
associations ; separate institutions, with an 
administrative machinery that moves at the 
voice of the people ; a separate environment, 
with an atmosphere of freedom peculiarly her 
own. Environment will affect the character of 
an ecclesia, as well as that of an individual or a 
nation. But, coming to history, that is every- 
thing. On the 18th day of April, 1775, England 
might have won back her American colonies by 
a concession of their rights. But on the 20th of 
April, the concession of every principle at issue 
could not have resulted in the incorporation of 
the colonies with the mother country ; for their 
Lexington had then been fought, and the history 
of a nation had had its prophetic beginning. So 
Christian sects, inexplicable as it may seem, are 
kept apart more by divergence of history than 
by a difference of creed. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2005 

PreservationTechnologJes 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 






'«, 



029 557 446 A 



